Monday, April 13, 2020

Tamil cinema yet to capitalize on digital marketing


Small scale entertainment businesses do not have the huge budgets to advertise on print or visual media. Like any business, marketing of the movie is essential for the success  of the company. However resourceful the marketing team maybe, without advertising the movie  in platforms that reach out to masses and also be on the page that your competitors are visible, not much headway can be made. In today’s growth of e-commerce, people who are the potential buyers   of the movie  that you produced  are searching on digital platforms to form an  opinion. In this scenario, for small scale producers it makes sense to go in for digital marketing, which is affordable and easier to take on the competition on a large scale. The recent success of non star cast Hindi films Super 30 and Suuji Daaga have made digital marketing the must for small time producers.
Boost to business
The digital platforms are doing good business as it has a huge patronage. Even the distributors and OTT platforms who are streaming well advertised movies are on to digital platforms to increase their visibility and the sales figures. If a small budget producer sticks to the traditional way of marketing, it would find itself lagging behind those who are doing digital marketing. Today’s  business men, especially those who are buying niche content for their digital platforms  do not give importance to any products that has no online presence. The reason is that any product that is put online with details and up for viewing comes with viewer’s reviews. A song  or a teaser of the film on a digital platform will get reactions from the viewers .This promotes the small budget film producer’s movies.  It also gives you the chance to prove that your movie is as good as the big star studded films that are in the market.

Tackling competition
The small budget producer does not have the resources to get a feedback from the distributors or the audience. Most of them release the movie in the theaters and wait for the collections to increase. There is also a thinking that as the movie is a small budget one; there is no need to go in for a big promotional budget. This concept has changed with digital marketing. Being on social media and through sponsored advertisements, the reach becomes global for small budget producers which some time ago depended on local patronage and word of mouth to increase the collections. A recent success story is Stree and Paramanu , the two Hindi films which reached the Rs 100 crore club. `Stree' the central character is by Sharadha Kapoor who is no great shakes at the Box office. `Paramanu' which had John Abraham in the lead faced competition from some big names . Both with low budget, managed to capture the public attention with the unique digital promotion.
Being on digital platforms can bring the industry players like the OTT platform owners , theaters , TV channels come directly in contact with the public reaction  and thereby get to know the plus and minus of the movie. This feedback was the privilege of big business, till some time back. They hired big time PR agencies to conduct promotional events with some high ranking critics   interviewing the cast and crew and going gaga   about it.  Now small budget movie producer are getting all this for peanuts. Apart from this game apps that based on the movie are created and put out to attract the audience, especially the gaming addicts.
Bloggers opinion
Yet another method to do digital marketing for small scale entertainment business is that there are many bloggers who write on movies which they specialize on. For a big budget movie producer, they have the resources to put in good write-ups in print and have sponsored TV shows of their movie, If a blogger with reputation and a sizable following notices your movie’s teaser- songs through the digital platform  and finds it good and says so, then you are in business. All this can happen only if you are into digital marketing and at the same time you are offering content that can get appreciation.

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