Ex | MGM's movie titles to strengthen PIX's library: Saurabh Yagnik

SONY PIX has always believed in bringing the biggest blockbusters of Hollywood to its viewers and catering to this promise PIX has recently partnered with Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) Studios, one of the leading studios of Hollywood. Speaking to  Adgully in an exclusive interview about this deal Saurabh Yagnik Business Head, Sony PIX revealed to us the exclusive details and basic tenets of the deal and PIX’s bright future with the deal strengthening their library.

Yagnik said that, “This is an output deal with MGM and for the next three years we will have all the current rights to movies to show it on PIX. The current new titles among the MGM stable such as Skyfall, The Hobbit, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and in future the remake of Robocop and other popular titles like The Pink Panther, The Rocky as well will be premiered on PIX as we have the rights to it. The library of MGM’s movies will also be made available to us. We also have so it’s a mix bag which also includes Bond movies.”

The Hobbit and The Skyfall, the two biggest movies of the current year being premiered on PIX will add to the attraction and in addition to that PIX has the entire 23 titles of Bond movies. The popular titles from MGM will add to the strength of PIX’s library and allow them to strengthen their market presence.The timing and spacing of the films will be done but Skyfall will be available in this year itself but the Bond titles will be premiered closer to the end of this year revealed Yagnik. The showcasing of these movies will definitely depend on viewers and after the theatrical their theatrical release is done.

Sony PIX had recently gone all out of the way to promote the premiere of MIB 3 large. Both the popular social networks – Facebook and Twitter had been integrated to create buzz around the premiere. But, the highlight of the campaign was the theme – Anti Alien Day – which resonated well with what the movie was all about, and comparing outer world aliens to the evil characters in the society brought in a fun connect. The connection was definitely felt as PIX held the number one position when the movie was premiered. Yagnik ecstatically said that, We had higher ratings during that time. It was the highest rated movie premiere in this category and the credit for it goes to the way we built up the campaign. It was a 360 campaign with a lot of emphasis on digital and we defined the premiere date as Anti-Alien Day. We had aggressively marketed the movie premiere across all the Sony channels such as SET MAX, SONY TV and SAB TV. We had huge outdoor campaigns in 4 cities Mumbai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Delhi and we also had print ads on the day of the launch across five cities.”

Sony was the first in the television category to promote 6 MIB moments live during the premier with # tags for the audience to participate and talk about their best movie moment. It resulted in 175,000 responses across Twitter. Yagnik said that we had a winner in hand and the campaign made people to come and watch the movie.During the campaign days we added 100.000 people on our facebook page and the interaction level was with the 87% people.

Sony PIX had devised a cool social media campaign around an ‘Anti Alien Day’ created for the promotions of its Men in Black 3 premiere. An interactive Facebook application that celebrated March 10 (the day of the premiere) as Anti Alien Day, enabled viewers to identify the aliens in their society, where aliens were a metaphor for the various evils plaguing society. On Twitter, one could also ‘spot the alien’ in MIB3 hoardings, upload the image on Twitter and win prizes for the most twitpics. In addition, Sony PIX partnered with Twitter to create real time conversations during the premiere. The movie was promoted on all the channels of Sony such SET MAX, SONY TV,

The premier of Transporter’s was a huge success and PIX will air it again. The short format has worked in their favour and they will experiment again. Yagnik says the important thing is to ensure that the short format blends into the DNA of the format. We will have to get the right form of short content and that is what we will put on air.

The MGM’s movie titles will strengthen PIX’s library and also boosts their competition in the market and pre and post digitization data is to be looked, this category enjoyed 69 GRPs during the pre-digitization and the last four weeks data shows that this category has moved upto 80GRPs. So it’s a 60% increase and this is a data about the metros. Yagnik said that “We used to get about 11 GRPs pre-digitization, and we have also grown 60% and have reached 18 GRPS. Our time spend has grown about 35% and our rate has expended to 20 to 25%. We are seeing a growth across all the time bands. The growth in prime time is good as well at the other times of the day.”

During the summers PIX will showcase titles like The Total Recall, The Amazing Spider and titles which have been acquired through this acquisition and they will be promoted aggressively to drive viewership. So, this summer beat the heat by sitting in front of your couch and enjoy the latest blockbusters on PIX.