Adgully Exclusive | Sony Pix brings Hollywood with clever moves, stands tall against competition

Post the rework done on the channel's packing and treatment, the reviews and responses towards Sony Pix have been very positive and encouraging. The changed perspective and position of the channel has managed to collect eye balls in comparatively small time frame.

Adgully exclusively caught up with Himmat Butalia, Marketing Head, Sony Pix to know more about the secret mantras for the leads and the channels plans to take ahead the winning stride.

Speaking about a few additions on the channel boards, Butalia said, "The channel has brought in two new important members on board. A voice over artist from the USA, who has done a good amount of work in the Hollywood and we believe is nothing less than what one would have heard in films like Transformers. Also we have a new programming head, who with a strong back ground and knowledge the number game and ample experience backed with acute programming sense, will be a key player in the time to come."

The channel attracted a lot of eye balls with the telecast of The Karate Kid. When asked as to whether he takes this as learning for the kind of films the channel should invest in to, he said, "We believe that depending on a single film or property is not good programming and business sense. One should use films like Avataar as trump cards to place moves in times of high competition instead of repetitive telecast."

Elaborating further he said, "The channel has to be built on the brand and not the film; numbers are not always the focus, one has to focus on the exposure the film receives. For example, if one uses and abuses something like the Rocky series, if someone else does it for the first time, even then it will not work. Though the content here is the same, the treatment is to be noted."

Shedding light on the marketing strategies the channel indulges into, Butalia remarked that, "The strategy at Sony Pix is constant engagement and marketing. By engagement we not only mean online engagement, we take into consideration optimum utilization of other available platforms as well, be it outdoor, on ground activity. With the Diwali season, we have built campaigns like the Super Pix Movies every month. This is a wholesome example of our constant engagement."

"The philosophy behind this is that," he explained, "as a movie channel, you cannot talk once and keep quite. Every movie is a different brand in itself. With every client eying every space available, you have to constantly keep a buzz around you for the correct and optimum market reach, targets achievement, visibility and dialogue with the viewers are very essential."

During the festive season, the channel has an interesting line up post the 9 pm time slot, one of them being, Angelina Jolie ad Jonny Depp starrer The Tourist. As a part of their constant engagement with their audiences, they have brought in film based games on the Facebook pages and fans.

In the recent past, the channel has brought in handful of interesting tie-up's with various other business outfits in India. Some of them being, association with Travelocity for the film Tourist, California Pizza Kitchen for Eat Love Pray and Saiks for Salt. As a part of their venture called the Pix Movie Club, the channel has tie 'up with Dominos, Mad Over Donut, while one with Gelato is in the pipeline. Since they believe in long term engagement, some of their long term deals are with Mail Today, Mid Day and PVR. "We do not see associating with studios as a viable tie-up since we aim to be a stand-alone property in the given market space", he said.

The channel which has roped in two separate creative entities ' Media vest and Zoom aims to extract the best of the people available, with effective buying and planning. "We believe in interesting and economical spends in doing innovations that are clutter breaking and involve constant use of the available mediums", Butalia added.

The channel boast of beating long standing players in the genre, with ease and strategic moves to carve a niche for themselves in the market as well as the English film buffs. | By Ankita Tanna [ankita(at)adgully.com]