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Bollywood – Yash Raj Films take it to Social Media

sahai — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 13:47:49 +0000

The Indian Film Industry is finally waking up to the power of social media. Films have started creating websites and doing promotion online, ads were already seen from quite some time and twitter/ facebook/ orkut were also being tried a bit. A few days ago I reviewed Quickgun Murugun’s online marketing campaign, though it was a crap one altogether, recently I noticed that even India’s biggest production house, Yash Chopra’s Yash Raj Films (YRF) has understood the power of the internet and taken it up to the social media to get some branding and do good promotions for all its films. I decided to do a done a detailed analysis and was impressed to see the results. Let’s see what they’ve done and what are the thoughts behind the campaign.

The Website:
Yes I agree that a flash site looks good but I still do not favour its implementation primarily because of the slow internet speed in India. Quite a few users who see a flash loading page often tend to close the page straightaway, that’s because of no or little patience. We don’t like to wait! Anyways, once its loaded, a decent interface comes up with the latest release in background (Dil Bole Hadippa these days), a nice way to promote the latest. Also the 30% page flash assures that the recent previous or the upcoming films are also noticed. Contests winners about the previous films are also displayed, motivating people to take part in more contests.

YRF Official Website

Next thing I liked about the site was that each film gets a microsite. No need to create new domains, all on sub domain and having enough knowledge and stuff for the fans or the inquisitive lot. Also contests were promoted in good fashion, full marks to the designers for making them strikingly visible.

YRF-dedicated-movie-microsites with Contests-Facebook-Twitter-Youtube

YRF understands that website alone is not enough to promote and hence has a twitter profile, a facebook fan page, and a youtube channel (operating since 2006), the most essential of them all. All their promos are updated there much before they are aired on TV. A very nice move to get free advertising.

Yash Raj Films on Twitter

Not only YRF, each film has got it dedicated twitter profiles or facebook groups and they’ve mentioned that they are official, a good move once again winning the trust of fans, equally important.

Dil Bole Hadippa (DilBoleHadippa) on Twitter

They have also assured that no one has the slightest of doubts about being official, every profile is linked to one another. The website has links to twitter, facebook and youtube channels and vice versa as well.

Dil Bole Hadippa - Official Group (Yash Raj Films) - Facebook

Dil-Bole-Hadippa-Facebook-ads

Though I am not a big supporter of ads, but if you have the money in your pockets, you should do it is my take and that’s what they’ve done. Facebook ads are evident and done enough to gather a lot of support for the fan pages/ groups .

The engagement team has made a point to keep the fans busy and connected by promoting them all over the place. After all brands are made out of fans/ users. Hence by engaging them consistently they are doing a good job that they speak for them.

YRF-dedicated-Facebook-URL

The technical team seems to be doing a good job. Assuring customized URL’s for their pages, the youtube channel apart from the regular stuff, has branded the page very well.

YouTube - yrf's Channel

They’ve also made sure that every film gets its separate playlist so that the user does not miss any promo for a particular film. A good thought indeed.

Dil Bole Hadippa Playlist

Although they have done a very decent job, the absence of a blog is something which I could not understand. An industry like the film industry which relies heavily or rather completely on its viewers/ fans, keeping that informed is a very important aspect. But not having a blog they are missing on a lot of free advertising and PR. If I am not wrong, Aamir Khan’s dog is named Shahrukh is something that every fan of Asmir knows, but where did they come to know of it ? From his blog of course.

Asking what the fans wished to see in future, what are their opinions, what could be rectified or improved in future is an easy way to get public opinions and then deliver to them. This would improve their fan base, credibility and gain a lot of respect among the crowd. This can be seen by the amount of respect Google has in the online world. A major reason for that is that it does what it’s users want, also the reason why Google’s head designer quit, he had to do not what he thought, but what people wanted. But that’s a one off case, and negligible compared to amount of respect and confidence Google gained among its consumers. So listening to people is a must do for YRF.

Barring the blogging part, Yash Raj Films have done a commendable job on the social media as of now and I must say Kudos to their team altogether. I seriously suggest Quickgun Murugun’s online marketing agency to learn a thing or two or rather all what YRF has done as what they did was entirely crap. Cheers YRF !

Although I did a detailed analysis, I may have missed something which you have noticed. Also possible that you disagree with me on certain points. Do drop in the comments section and let’s have a discussion over it.

Article cross-posted on Zapylacz blog.

Technorati Tags: aditya-chopra, bollywood, Branding, brands, dil-bole-hadippa, facebook, google, indian-brands, internet-power, PR, rani-mukherji, shahid-kapoor, social-media, twitter, yash-chopra, yash-raj-films, yrf

What is a brand ?

sahai — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 14:05:39 +0000

Of late I have been asked by quite a few people about branding and what are the steps to become a brand but today I was asked a good question, What is a Brand or better put Define a Brand.

Wikipedia says : A brand is a name or trademark connected with a product or producer. Brands have become increasingly important components of culture and the economy, now being described as “cultural accessories and personal philosophies”.

FreeDictionary.com says :

apart from a 100 other definitions.

Let’s talk practical : Shahrukh Khan is a brand, Farhan Akhtar is not; Harsha Bhogle is a brand, Arun Lal is not; Michael Jackson is a brand (yes, he still is), Rakhi Sawant is NOT. Even though I did write about her sometime back and that too in relation to branding, but she never was and can never be.

In terms of product value, I will say they are brands because the first thing is that THEY SELL. Any Shahrukh film just sells, even though the promos have not been good, even though the film is crap, even though it may have no other superstar in it, what matters is it sells. Same does not hold for Farhan Akhtar.

If Harsha Bhogle is on air, everyone listens to him, his name sells there. The same is not true in the case of an Arun Lal or a Rameez Raja, even though they are seen commentating on all channels and are all over the place, people may listen but do not respect their commentary.

Brand Michael Jackson

An MJ album used to sell without even people listening his songs, they just bought. His shows were a sellout because people knew its M-I-C-H-A-E-L J-A-C-K-S-O-N who’s performing. However old he grew, his shows were always a sellout. He was a household name, even my dad knows his name, even though he never heard a single song of him. On the contrary, even though Rakhi Sawant is a household name, but is her show watched on each and every person ? Though people like me watched a few of her tv appearances, but did we watch it because of Rakhi? No is the answer, and what’s more is that more people switched channels when they saw her on air.

So who is a brand ? Let me tell what does not define it. Any person/product/company which catches the eye of the people simply is NOT termed a brand. It is a necessary condition but not a sufficient one. Something which fades away with time is NOT one. Negative publicity does NOT make one.

A brand is something/someone/product or company which :

May be you can add more points ? I put what I could recall of but I guess you may have much more to add, looking forward to discuss and learn more from you people.

Technorati Tags: bollywood, Branding, farhan-akhtar, harsha-bhogle, michael-jackson, personal branding, rakhi sawant, shahrukh-khan

Things we can learn from Rock On!

sahai — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:35:16 +0000

Some times even movies can teach us a lot. Probably everyone of us has seen the movie ROCK ON, here are some things which I thought we can learn from it.

1. Talent must be MARKETED, if properly shown to relevant people, it can reach new levels and set new benchmarks. (Joe, a great guitarist, does not want to tell people and give auditions) If people don’t see your talent, how will they value it ?

Market Your Talent

2. What we’ve learnt must be shared with others and must not end if we end, it must go on. A true leader always always creates a 100 more leaders (Joe and KD started a business of nurturing new talent) .

Create new leaders

3. We all make mistakes but the point is do we learn from our mistakes and move on keeping in mind that we won’t make the same mistake again. (Joe realized that Aditya was not wrong, it was the situation and the circumstances that made him feel so, which he understood and came back).

Magik reunited for that Second Chance

4. Life does not offer a second chance to everyone, but if that chance is given do we grab it with both hands ? I guess most of us let that chance go ! (Magik grabbed that chance and performed once again on stage, and I don’t need to say that it did remarkably well).

Criteria for success - Money ?

5. Money is not the only criteria to be successful and happy in life. (Aditya is very successful and has everything in life what an ideal person would want to, but was Aditya happy living that life? All of us know the answer, there are other things in life that are important in life to keep us happy.

6. You must set your priorities right, there are a 100 different things to do for everyone at an given point of time, it’s WE who have to take that correct decision based on the importance. (Rob could have met that producer whom Anu Malik wanted to meet him, but he knew his priorities – Magik).

Learn to Compromise

7. We all have to make compromises in life at some stage, we should LEARN do that, sometimes a successful compromise can take us a long journey (Had Magik completed their first album according to the director’s needs, the album being a HIT, they would have dictated terms from the next album, unfortunately, they DIDN’T) .

Learn to Forgive

8. Sometimes even our “bestest” friends do something bad to us, but they don’t do it intentionally, we should find out the reasons, and best part is FORGIVE them. No point in carrying a heavy heart all through your life. Needless to say, your friend should be worth the forgiveness.

Friends Forever

9. Best friends are forever, no matter how good or bad the times we face, real friends will always be at your side.

Learn to innovate

10. When resources are less and we really need something. that’s the time when we have be INNOVATIVE (Magik really needed the money and Aditya was innovative enough to sing old songs with Rock Touch).

Last but the most important point, Live your Dreams ! Someone has correctly said

Dreams are not those which you see while asleep, but they DON’T let you sleep

In order to ROCK ON, you must have a Dream !

Live your Dreams

Well, those are the things I learnt, it’s not an exhaustive list, probably you can something more. Drop in your learnings in the comments section. Highly appreciated.

Technorati Tags: arjun-rampal, bollywood, farhan-akhtar, hindi-movies, india, Inspirations, Learnings, Life, movies, rock on