With social media becoming one of the key mediums for viewers to discover content and the film industry increasingly leveraging it to engage their audience through original content, Facebook is looking to sink its teeth further into movie marketing.

Over the years, movie marketing itself has undergone a massive shift with the advent of the internet and digital media. Given the changing consumption patterns of film goers and rapid internet and smartphone penetration, digital media is pivoting large box- office results for Hindi movies.

Marketing mix

Tracking the impact of both traditional and social media on over ₹100 crore of first-day box office collections was a major hurdle. Though existing media metrics such as ratings, impressions, readership, views, likes and click rates are often used as measures to evaluate a film’s media plan, these metrics do not measure the impact of the marketing plan in influencing footfalls in theatres, and subsequently, the box-office collections for the film.

A research project was undertaken by Ormax Media to concretely establish the box-office impact of various media used by film producers in their marketing mix. The research was conducted over 27 weeks, and covered 56 cities. Six film campaigns were tracked using this research: Judwaa 2 , Secret Superstar , Golmaal Again , Ittefaq , Tiger Zinda Hai and Pad Man .

Most-effective tool

The aim was to cover three different tiers of movies, ranging from large box-office openers to niche releases with emerging stars. The six films were a combination of big, medium and small-scale films.

The research showed digital media Facebook and YouTube to be the most effective media in driving Buzz Power, at 67 per cent and 51 per cent, respectively. Buzz Power and Appeal Power is a metric that captures the ability of a media to increase the buzz or appeal of the film. Television came in at the third spot, followed by other media.

Incidentally, the ‘Facebook and Instagram’ combination had an un-duplicated Buzz Power of 69 per cent. In the case of Appeal Power, YouTube came in the lead at 15 per cent, followed by Facebook at 12 per cent, making the duo the top two media, while television and other media trailed.

Commenting on Facebook’s impact on the Indian movie business, Saurabh Doshi, Head-Entertainment Partnerships, APAC, Facebook said, “We aim to become the go-to-destination for celebrities and movie marketers to promote and connect with their followers in an authentic way and experience the power of organic content and first-hand interactions.”

The research showed Facebook and Instagram combined, proved to have delivered the highest impact with 21 per cent contribution to a Hindi film’s first-day box-office sales.

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