DevD was one example of an Indian movie that did some sort of online promotions for the film. Probably seeing the success of an offbeat film getting good response and Fox Production House from the US involved, the hype around Social Media, the producers were tempted enough to do some promotions for Quickgun Murugun (from now referred as QGM), another film with no star-cast around. But little did they know that the agency are sitting to make money and to fool people and not to do some real work.

I came to across a twitter profile of QGM sometime back when it followed me, but seeing the tweets I assumed that it’s some person who’s making fun of it or maybe just making use of the name since it’s promos were out. But when I came to know that there’s some agency that’s handling it I thought I should look over and see what they are doing. I always want to learn more and thought that I can learn a thing or 2 from their campaign. Had never thought that I would be writing this later on. I did a very basic analysis and was surprised to see such a crap campaign. Let me share a few of the primary faults which make the campaign a total waste. Wasted in the process is SOME effort, LARGE amount of money and created some negative thoughts in the mind of the people about online marketing as a medium.

First things first : Twitter Analysis :

How many personal twitter profiles do you have ? Well, I have one and I guess all of us have a single profile. No, managing more than one is a different issue. QGM has 2 profiles ! I have no clue which one is original, well I guess both are fake or both are real (real means handled by the marketing guys).

Well, my analysis showed that both were handled by the same people. What ? Why 2 profiles ? Doesn’t it create a confusion as to which one is real, which one should I follow, if any, am I not dividing my followers by creating 2 separate profiles ? Also makes it difficult to maintain 2 different profiles.
Loses authenticity, viewer trust, credibility, no of followers and makes the job difficult. In short foolish thing to do.
Not to forget the numbers, the profile does get even even half the no of people it is following and they call it they have spread the word. Crap.

Let’s come to Facebook now :

QGM has a profile as well as a fan page.

I wonder what are the people trying to promote, the character or the movie? Seems they are confused themselves. Before you jump to conclusions, I must verify that both of them are handled by the same people. The profile has some 700 friends while the fan page has some 1300 fans. Again the same problem, authenticity apart from double the work and most importantly dividing the fan base (whatever small it exists) ? 700 friends and 1300 fans means a meagre 2000 people connected (although there will be a lot of repeated people, so count would be much less).

Moreover they did not even bother to secure the personal fan page URL. It has a long 12 digit number making it impossible for a user to recall. To tell you all, after 100 fans you can secure the URL for your liking.

Well the confirmation for both the twitter profiles being handled by same people comes from here as the QGM profile page and Fan Page give links to different twitter profiles. Strange but true and moreover quite stupid I would comment. Keeping fans confused all the time I guess was the aim of the campaign, if it really was, then I must say, they did a splendid job. Fan page points to orkut profile and quickGmurugun twitter profile. Same twitter profile points to profile page on fb, the profile page points to blog and site and a DIFFERENT twitter profile which points God knows where. Phew!

Even though the movie has been released, it has been able to generate just a handful of people especially considering the fact that DevD generated some 14,000 fans that too in a time when Facebook was not the premier choice of the people in India. It’s been off late that people have switched to facebook from Orkut and that too in the metros, people in other parts of the country still stick to Orkut.

Orkut, well is a total tsunami. Atleast before the website disaster I would say. The orkut community was created a mere 5 days ago, that’s 2 days prior to the release date.

Probably the promoters realized that since FB and Twitter are not working, but my target audience (TG) are on Orkut as well and hence created a community. Well the community got all its posts on the same day, and was able to generate as many as 31 fans (till I last noticed). Yes you may check it, it’s only 31. Wonder how that was promoted, even if I create a community today, I know I can get a 50 people in a day, to say the least. QGM, being a movie should have generated a few 100′s atleast had it been managed properly. And if it was done on time, it would have generated a huge number as well with proper management.

Let’s come to the tsunami now : The QGM Website

What’s the difference between a website and an image/photo/picture ? Probably you are thinking how can you compare the two, there’s no relation and can’t be done. But when you see the QGM website, even you can compare between them or rather end up saying like I did, the promoters do know the difference between a site and an image. To be precise, the site has just poster of the movie and a single clickable link on homepage, of course not to forget the designer’s link. The link (if you find it), redirects to a index page,wonder when will developers understand the need for specific URL’s and not just default ones. To make matters worse, the index page has a very heavy flash which takes ages to load that too on a broadband connection, no matter the bounce rate for the site is a whopping 60%. Wonder when will the people understand that usability has to be given preference rather than looks. Pardon me, but the fact is that the website is not a lady, for whom you fall for looks. Half of the internal links open in new windows creating to the agony of the user. Also there is no option to turn off the sound, which made me turn off my speakers for the few minutes I spent on the website trying to analyze it. Phew! Poor, really poor. What’s worse is that it doesn’t have a single interaction place.

Ah! Did I forget the blog ?

The website have a blog in itself ? Why ? The developers did not know how to install a wordpress or a blogger probably, so what did they do ? They started a blog on blogspot. What’s more surprising is that even though they did not get the desired URL on blogspot they did not bother to host the blog on the website itself. The desired name is wasted by someone on blogger and the wordpress similar domain name seems like they thought they might use this but then thought of something else. The wordpress blog has just ONE post, briefing about the movie, giving the site link, that’s all. Not even bothered to change anything else on the blog, not even the default text on the ABOUT page. Though it may be kept in mind here that there is no confirmation as to who’s handled that blog.

The original blog, on blogspot, has 21 posts generated around a period of 2 months. Problems :
In that span it has put just 2 movie trailers, that too the latest being more than a month ago, I suspect there are many more than 2 promos made.

There was an attempt to create some series of articles, a good thought but again lack of blogging experience was very highly evident. The first 2 articles in a series of 4 were posted way back on July 14-15 after which the bloggers went off to a sleep and woke up again a month later to complete the rest 2 that too on a single day. Objective is never established in such a case. The readers NEVER stick to an inconsistent blog. No wonder they managed just a handful of comments on the entire blog (spanning 21 posts). They even tried to engage the readers through a one off contest but that also didn’t manage a single comment, reason as even you can guess now, if now one reads the blog how will they come to know about the comment and what’s the reason of having in that case? Again a waste of time and effort.
Another big flaw is that none of the posts led to further pages about the movie, it does not have a link to the twitter profile, NOT EVEN TO THE WEBSITE. Yes, even I couldn’t believe this! God knows what were they thinking when they created that crappy blog.

The purpose of an online campaign is to engage the readers/viewers, keep them updated, occupy a small place in their mind at least whenever they are online and then connect to them for letting them know more of the brand. When this is done successfully only then can an investor think of some ROI (Return on Investment). If he spend X amount of money does not generate you X+Y amount of money (Y being a positive no), then what is the use of having the promotion done?

A movie which such great content to promote and that has to target straightaway to the young crowd (15-35), is able to generate only 1300 fans on FB (that’s the max they could do). It’s not wrong to say that they made a mess of what COULD have been a remarkable example of online branding and marketing in India.

And what they claim is that they have a team dedicated to run that campaign, probably I alone would have run a better campaign than that, especially with the amount of money they would have got; I say!

Just hope the movie does well, wanted to convey that what all you shouldn’t be doing in an online marketing campaign, or probably discuss with someone better in the field, not one who FAKES !

Technorati Tags: Branding, campaigns, ethics, false-campaigns, internet, internet-power, marketing, movies, online-branding, quickgun-murugun

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