FICCI Frames '14: Cinema advertising, the biggest game changer: UFO Moviez's Agarwal

Day 2 once again saw the presence of dignitaries from the media and advertising fraternity which led to discussions at interesting sessions. The discussion covered facts like innovative and sustainable business avenues towards greater revenues in film exhibition. It also focused on cinema advertising and the economics of strategy; infrastructure development and taxation issues for theatres; global audience measurement methods in the box office to bring in transparency to the system. 

The panelists in this session included Kapil Agarwal, JMD, UFO Moviez ; Pramod Arora, Group President, PVR Ltd; Ashish Saksena, COO, BIG Cinemas; Arturo Guillen, VP – Europe, Middle East & Africa, Rentrak Corporation; Harjeet Chhabra, Sr VP, Marketing SAB TV, the session was moderated and anchored by a renowned Columnist & Author, Vanita Kohli-Khandekar. 

We are quite familiar with the term Cinema Advertising as Indians have always had a soft corner for cinema. Advertisers too have realized the fact that to reach out to the desired targeted audiences, brands and marketers need to go back to cinema like the earlier days when it was the only form of entertainment. A couple of years ago cinema advertising as a medium was not-so-popular among the marketers but lately the medium has garnered numbers for them.

Commenting on the topic under discussion, Kapil Agarwal said, “Undoubtedly cinema advertising as a phenomenon has been one of the biggest game changer. But it is also a fact that cinema advertising died a natural death in India some years back. The basic cause of the same was the growing rate of multiplexes from 400 screens to about (more than) 10,000 screens in more than 200 cities and towns.  Hence it became quite difficult or next to impossible for advertisers to reach each one of them and that too in an innovative form. Cinema advertising is much beyond running local ads in halls, or a 30-seconder running twice as filler; it is quite an innovative and creative thought procedure.”

Arturo Guillen, stressing upon how cinema advertising has been successful in India, said, “Well, if we go decades back, India has always been an amazing market in terms of cinema. People outside India are also banking big on the cinema market but not like in India. I guess with such a step advertisers and marketers have started hitting the right chord.”

Giving his view on the international market scenario, Guillen made a point by saying, “Cinema advertising as a concept has been a hot-spot globally. You will see a lot of marketers banking big on the same with a lot of international movie theaters and films. Also this concept plays an important role in reaching out to the masses.”
Given the growth of the medium Vanita Kohli-Khandekar asked, to what they would attribute the growth of cinema advertising. In answer to her query Agarwal replied, “The biggest factor was the audience’s consistent love for cinema. This factor brought back the advertisers on the medium (cinema) which they used to keep as one of the last options in the media mix and budgets. Secondly on the advertiser’s front, now with digitized theatres and a central server, all cinemas can be controlled using online means in terms of giving proper statistics to the advertisers. Hence the advertisers can also look at the growing popularity of the medium. Also as said earlier, cinema caters to the undivided masses hence advertisers can grab the attention of confined audiences.”

Reacting to the above viewpoint marketer, Harjeet Chhabra said, “As a marketer I believe cinema advertising as a medium is quite interesting and effective. We marketers cannot lose any opportunity in terms of reaching out to our audiences, we just wait in terms of grabbing it but in an innovative way. As mentioned by my fellow friends and peers while making their points advertising in cinema undoubtedly helps us reach out to all the age-groups in terms of filling the gap, apart from our target audience.”

“Looking at the growing ad-rates on television, cinema advertising is a great opportunity for small scale brands and marketers,” Chhabra stated.
Making a valid point Ashish Saksena said, “Cinema advertising is much beyond running ads or making innovations between movies. Alternate content is also gaining momentum in theatres. Today theatres or big screens are used much for many other properties like cricket/football matches and more so for brands it has been a great medium like always.”

Chhabra concluded the session, with an interesting remark. He said, “Over the last few years, brands have gone way beyond using stars, in film partnerships and have realized in terms of investing in cinemas, a basic example being that of Krishh. Also we all have seen so many commercials running before and in between intervals of films as we ourselves have used the medium quite effectively. Let us accept the fact that we all go to watch movies every week or once in every two weeks so what can be better than this medium to catch all our audiences in one go.”

Taking into consideration all the points that were discussed, we can conclude that cinema advertising is growing faster as compared to all other mediums excluding digital. The panelists too foresee the next five years quite effective for Cinema Advertising and with this thought the session closed on an optimistic note. 

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