Creating right tools to engage correctly: MAX's Vaishali Sharma

‘MAX, Dewana Bana De! ’This is one line that a Hindi movie buff in India will recollect for sure. Such is the power and brand recognition that the team at SONY Max has been striving and working on for the last couple of years. The Hindi movie channel from the umbrella of Multi Screen Media (MSM) has been rigorously working towards strengthening their brand building and brand equity not only on television but especially through the digital and social media platforms.

The channel has always created a different buzz for every movie that premieres on the channel rather than just promoting the premiere launch taking forward the philosophy  of their ‘Deewana Bana de’ tagline. On digital too, the channel has successfully created path-breaking initiatives and campaigns since 2011 with an aim to strengthen and promote the brand. Sighting a few high points for the channel on the medium like Facebook fans and Twitter followers, the channel has been moving ahead of its competitors by remarkable margins.

Adgully caught up with Vaishali Sharma- Vice President Marketing- Sony MAX to know more about the activities that the channel has been doing on the digital and social platforms.

To begin with, sighting a few examples of the activities done in the past, for movies like Aarakshan and Paan Singh Tomar Premier, users had to click a picture of Amitabh Bachchan and Irfann Khan on TV and share it on MAX FB wall and the lucky winners would win MAX gratifications. Also for movie festival promotions James bond + Rajnikanth movies, the channel created a YouTube animated video.

Speaking about the initiatives that have helped in creating an edge for the channel over competition, Sharma said, “Firstly for us the entire space is treated as one media as we do not treat it as social media separately. We treat the medium quite uniquely keeping in mind the ethos and values of the channel hence we do a lot of customized things on the medium.”

No qualms in stating that the numbers in terms of Facebook and Twitter fan base have gone up from being 1,50,00 to 5,50,000 (May 2011 to November 2012). Also, in Twitter the follower’s counts raised from 995 followers to 3400 followers for the same period. 

The medium is quite unique and the audience present there likes involvement and engagement instead of a one way communication hence the channel keenly uses the medium for quite a few things like creating engagement for the brand and involvement among the audience and secondly for creating a tune-in from the audience towards the channel in terms of building unique interaction among the audiences and also to build tools around our big premiers. She says, “We do give a holistic approach to the entire medium but also pay equal focus to each medium keeping in the treatment in terms of need and demand of that medium.”  

During the year 2011, there was also a shift in strategy though wherein she says, “Shifting our focus from just talking about movies on MAX to Positioning MAX as a ‘Hub’ for everything related to Bollywood has also helped the channel reaching to their TG.”

In terms of standing ahead of the curve and treating Twitter differently, Sharma said, “We keep in the mind the need of Twitter and its advantages hence for the movie, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, we received more than 2800 tweets during the movie airing. Sony MAX twitter fans grew from 78300k users to 79800 (1500 fans added to Sony MAX handle) in a matter of few hours. Uday chopra tweeted at 1:15pm and his tweet was retweeted by 155 users and his tweet reached more than 8.21lac users...Twitter was trending in India and Mumbai. It will take for us to get the number.”

Similarly for Talaash an exclusive Twitter contest was running which was a single day contest with an aim to promote the Talaash Premiere on Sony Max. A series of 10 back to back questions and the person who answered most of the question won IPL Hampers.
 
No doubt as to we all know that IPL has created wonders for the channel may it be on the television front or digital front. IPL 2012 was promoted MAX Style wherein if the viewer gets Maximum LIKES on the image and the team will make that picture (Team/Captain) as the cover Photo of the page for the day. The followers and facebook fan page increased and took a toll really well and added almost 4,00,000 more fans for the channel.

The channel launched all commercials on digital before it hits the television screens and the channel achieved 2 million views in 4 weeks, 18.2 million total impression and 3.2 million video views during Pepsi IPL 2013. MAX fans increased by almost 45% reaching out to 3.39lac new fans during ipl 2013  taking MAX facebook page to the 1mn+ fans league. And how can we forget the Jumping Jhapak application, a dance tool & schedule reminder, the audience was given a chance to click a face and have the animated character dance to the jumpak thumpak step. Application was uploaded on the play store and missed calls went by up by 1.73 lacs. The total app downloads rose to 2.29 lacs whereas the total video uploads registered were 11,300 and average rating was 4.4 TVRs that time. More than 3.92lacs caller tune were set and close to 20k ring tone downloads.

Now off late, the channel was seen tapping every stone for Aashiqui 2. She said, “We did a huge Aashiqui Moment contest promotion on Facebook and Aashiqui Moments Winners were announced live during the Movie Premiere, Adding more to it here were Facebook Love Tips, Love Meter App on Facebook, You Tube Roadblock and much more.”

The channel has brought Hungama Digital on board for their digital mandate. Speaking about the specifications or briefs given to the agency, Singh states, “We discuss the priorities in terms of brands, terms of tuning, terms of driving people and what we need people to talk about the channel on day to day basis. They come upto us with ideas, thus it’s a collaborative process. Recently when we premiered Aashiqui we started building loads of activities 15-20 days prior to the premiere and did loads of activities to create buzz, we also did customized promo.  We decide activities depending upon the genre of the film.”

Lastly, speaking on the kind of spends that the channel indulges in on social media platform Sharma opined that it depends upon movie to movie.
Continuing further she said, “But it is a significant percentage is going up as the reach of this medium is expanding. People are connected through these platforms with the help of smart-phones. The fact is that it is going to grow and grow and with huge usage of smart-phones they will engage with social media platforms and app more.”

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