Click, shoot and download

Through Internet, it is possible to reach your global audience with a carefully structured promotion clip of the movie thus creating awareness and inducing trials amongst the netizens worldwide

The advent of Internet has provided a great opportunity to the Indian film industry. In the past, the movies were released due to various considerations or rather limitations in one city at a time and word of mouth was used to generate awareness, thus adopting a fatalistic approach towards the success of film. Marketing per se did not play any role in determining the commercial success of the film. But today, the art and science of marketing and the tools of marketing available to the film industry can to a very great extent influence the commercial outcome of the movie venture.

Internet has further added a new dimension to the marketing and promotions of entertainment products. Through this medium, it is possible to reach your global audience with a carefully structured promotion clip of the movie thus creating awareness and inducing trials amongst the netizens worldwide. This has already been tested successfully by a leading Internet site in India through global promotion of four major productions last year. A special web site was made for the movie containing video/audio clips, star chats, story, cast, features, downloadable wallpapers, screensavers, greeting cards, contests and fan club. The site was extensively promoted on-line by the Internet Company and as a result more than a million netizens world wide visited the site and in all probability made a decision to watch the movie on its release. These were the first structured attempts to harness the Internet potential for movie promotions on a global scale.

The Indian film industry is singularly focused on the use of Outdoors and TV mediums for the promotion of the films. The Internet unfortunately is not within their scheme of things. May what I will say now may open their minds to at least try this new medium which is poised to make sea changes in the socio-economic fabric of the world.

Nothing is more powerful than an idea whose time has come. It took the Radio 35 years to reach 50 million households. This was achieved by T.V. in 13 years but the Net has only taken 5 years to reach this landmark. So much so that the T.V. audience has started to migrate to the Net. Studies reveal that time spent on the Net cuts into time spend on eating sleeping and watching T.V. Studies reveal that 78% of the people take out time from watching T.V. to surf on the net. This confirms the comparatively growing popularity of the net.

In absolute numbers, netizens are growing rapidly. NASSCOM Internet survey projects 50 million users in India by 2003 Dec. These users are early adopters and by nature they are natural leaders. The influence group of such people is large and you can well expect your promotions to have the potential of impacting more than 100 million people in the country. If you add to this the NRI netizen segment, you have a very potential market to be tapped on the net. This validates the reach of the net today and as it grows in the near future.
All this plus the global reach and small lead times to mount a promotional campaign comes in a very economical package. Internet companies are pricing very aggressively and the film production houses can well do to take advantage of this.

There are certain USPs of this medium. It is interactive and dynamic. You can build a community of netizens around your products/services and nurture these relationships over the years to build a formidable and loyal customer base. Customer feed back, their active participation in product development and loyalty can minimise the inherent risk of failure that plagues the film industry. Yes, film production is an art but its business management can be made into a science with precise deliverables.

There is another opportunity related to the Internet and the entertainment industry that has the mandarins of the new economy all very excited. Everybody is waiting for the broadband to happen in order to get into the distribution of entertainment products on the net. With the progressive availability of the band width there will be a very large and ready market for viewing entertainment programmes on the net in form of digital video. The programmes could be soaps, plays, musicals, game shows or feature films. You will have a customer who will be willing and capable of watching your movies on the net as his convenience on pay and view basis.

These things will all happen and in the Internet world they have a tendency to happen much faster than you anticipated. Please remember that the internet year is only a quarter of a calendar year and technology leapfrogs. By next year entertainment products on the net will be making economic sense.

Entertainment business will never be the same again after the broadband has taken a pie of the entertainment industry. It would make eminent sense to get prepared for it now, so that when the critical mass is available and when the distribution backbones are all there in place, you would be there first and ready to market quality products. You would notice that there will be a great demand for interactive entertainment products which are mass personalised, which cannot be done in the existing broadcasting methodology. Through Internet you can narrow cast your product competently.

Different production houses would do better if they start to use Internet as a medium of promotion today and familiarise themselves with this medium. They will definitely have a early mover advantage for exploiting the potential that will soon be a reality. In Internet, the first and the early mover advantage gives you significant gains. You cannot but belong to this group if you want to do serious business also in the future. So let the action begin with click, shoot and download.

Dhruv Sharma, CEO of 123India.com shares his views on net as a platform for Bollywood promotions