Exclusive | Aiming to leap with 'The Amazing Spiderman': PIX's Yagnik

When it comes to promoting and marketing their premieres in an engaging and innovative way Sony PIX has always been amongst the front runners. This time around, Sony PIX is carrying out a unique campaign to promote the premiere of the superhero blockbuster film, The Amazing Spiderman, which will air on the channel on Sunday 16th June 2013 at 1 PM & 9 PM. This campaign is based on the premise that in a world where  so much negativity is prevalent , Sony PIX is giving its viewers an opportunity to honour the amazing people in their lives, by creating ‘The largest web of amazing people’.

With promotions across mediums such as print, online and television, Sony PIX has come up with a yet another innovative and interactive way to interact with its viewers. Sony PIX will engage viewers through the ‘First Live Interactive Game’ in the social media space. Through this game, viewers will be encouraged to identify their amazing friends and people around them by visiting www.webofamazingpeople.com and tag them as Amazing people.

There is more to the campaign  wherein the activity also has a fun twist to it by integrating movie related questions post tagging and enabling users to enter a lucky draw for winning special TAS merchandize and some Sony Electronic products. The highlight of the campaign will be on the day of premiere (Sunday 16th June, 1 and 9 pm) when the interactive live game will be integrated with the telecast and www.webofamazingpeople.com. While watching the movie audiences have to spot ‘spidey tags’ or codes during the telecast of the movie and enter them on the microsite. One lucky winner who has followed the process of tagging and entered all spidey tags correctly will win a trip to TAS studio in Los Angeles.

The campaign ‘India’s biggest web of amazing people’ is all about encouraging users to notice the amazing deeds and acknowledge the amazing people around them. This digital campaign ‘India’s biggest web of amazing people’ which began on 8th June 2013 will first build awareness about amazing people and users will be asked  to identify their amazing friends and  people around them. This  viral campaign  will help form the largest ‘web of amazing people’ and culminate on the day of the premiere i.e. 16th June 2013  when will fans will interact  by playing  a LIVE game during the premiere of the film.

Adgully while in conversation with Saurabh Yagnik, Business Head, Sony PIX & Himmat Butalia, Marketing Head, Sony PIX, gained insight into the innovative marketing promotions the channel has always come up with for their premieres and how this time around they intend going a step ahead with their digital campaign thereby  generating  the ultimate engagement  with their audiences.

Himmat Butalia believes that a brand’s success depends on how well it connects with its audience and builds ongoing conversations on a consistent basis. Following the tremendous success of the mega premiere of MIB 3 it has prompted them to take a step further and initiate a live interactive game for the television premiere of ‘The Amazing Spiderman’.

Elaborating on how the marketing of the premiere needs to be innovative and disruptive at the same time he said, “So this time it is a level up and  about giving  it a different spin. It is all about The Amazing Spiderman. What we are doing is we are creating a URL and telling everyone to come to this URL which is a website thereby  creating one of the world’s 

largest web. In keeping with the movie title The Amazing Spiderman we came up with this thought that there could be many people in your life whom you find amazing.  It could be your mom , your friend etc they can come to this URL and through your Facebook account you can start tagging them so a web is created on the most amazing people .”

The URL  is called webofamazingpeople.com. This is how they plan to  create interaction and integrate with Facebook . “So what we are doing since the campaign has taken off today (8th June) is initially we are not talking about the movie on Facebook because what we  realized was you cannot talk about the movie beyond a period of 4-5 days. People want something new constantly on the social media platform so the idea has been how to build a campaign lasting for 10-15 days,” said Butalia.

Their campaigns have always been more insightful where they have not talked about the characters but on the contrary have taken insights from it and created specific events connected to the common man.

He continued to say, “If you don’t create a connection especially on the digital platform where there is so much happening dialogues will not happen. This is because you need to share and you need to comment . This campaign started today on FB and on Twitter and this is connected to the URL because this is where the conversations in terms of what you want to create ,comment  or establish will show.  So while you create the web that will start on the day of  the promotion i.e.  8th June , on the day of the premiere that is 16th June 2013 which will be aired  at 1pm and 9 pm  while the movie is on air and you are tagging your friends you need to enter the given codes that appear on your screen and this can win you  a trip to Hollywood , Sony Pictures set where the movie was shot along with more prizes that we will be giving away.”

Hence by creating interest and getting everybody to this platform the channel is ultimately engaging with the audiences for the premiere. Butalia went on to say , “ At the end of the day it is all about engagement and about how many people have watched the movie and what are the kind of numbers we get. With the success of Men in Black 3 which worked for us we are quite confident that this too will fully work in the right direction but this campaign is totally a different thing. Our first campaign was Twitter related but this is a URL and Youtube riveted campaign.”

PIX plans to promote the URL through a different strategy. The Spiderman will only come in  during the last 3-4 days of the campaign. So basically they start a connect by creating an interest in communication which strategy they had earlier adopted for the Transporter series, then for Men In Black and are now utilizing for the promotion of the Amazing Spiderman. “We’ll have a post with Jackie Chan, Tom Cruise, Kim Kardashian etc who have done amazing things in their personal lives which may not be known to the public at large . So we are trying to pick up stuff which will create interaction . We are trying to connect and say they are amazing people who can be tagged and then promoting the movie . First we’ll be talking about the premiere on Youtube with which platform we have collaborated and then it will move to the tagging which will create the largest web,” shared Butalia.

There is no doubt that Sony PIX has created a good amount of buzz for their latest premiere . “But our concentration is all about creating engagement and dialogue with our consumers while the movie is on . That has been our strategy for all our premieres.  We need to keep on innovating and hopefully before our  next premiere we will  come up with something entirely different,” says a very optimistic and confident Butalia .

Saurabh Yagnik too spoke about the promotional and marketing strategies lined up for The Amazing Spiderman and how they aim to make it as  successful as their earlier campaign viz. Men In Black 3. This digital campaign ‘India’s biggest web of amazing people’ encourages users to notice the amazing deeds performed by the most amazing people around them.

Speaking about the success of MIB and how they have never looked back since then , Yagnik said, “I think the MIB campaign was in some ways path breaking for us and in some ways it gave an invitation to people to sample the channel. With that we also made a slew of investments in content and with content and a better scheduling and the overall halo the MIB campaign gave us  has led to our channel’s share spurting and we see significant growth in our performance.”

Regarding investments they have made in terms of specific type of content he said their content choices are based on the understanding of  the viewers and what works with them and that has always been at the center of their content acquisition decisions. “We cannot quote investment numbers but we have definitely put in a lot of skin in the game,” said Yagnik. He also went on to inform about the forthcoming movies through their current partnership which are expected to be aired within a month or two.

The Amazing Spiderman is very successful franchise . One may recall that when the movie first released it had  created quite a furore in the market at that point of time. Hence with a view to build more  traction towards the channel Yagnik explained , “We are going in for a very aggressive 360 degree campaign which includes home channel, network channel and cross channel promotions. We have also created some kind of PR opportunities around the property and so we had Spiderman coming to the sets of Extra Innings on IPL and that is how we started talking of IPL outside of the channel. We have also created certain events at Hamleys and some other places where Spiderman would be visiting. We would be breaking the premiere dates  at that spot and there are certain interviews with Hollywood talents that we are doing which will then help amplify the whole premiere proposition for us.”

Adding further he said, “There is interesting work happening on social media as well and social media has always been at the core of our marketing campaigns . The campaign is breaking today and being in a world which is completely  fraught with a lot of negatives we are trying to spill a positive message with Spiderman who is a simple  next door hero.  We are actually looking at the concept of promoting amazing people and building an interactive campaign around it.  Besides that we are aggressively promoting the campaign on print as well as a strong media plan in digital and all this will lead to driving viewership towards the movie.

This campaign just like MIB concentrates on positivity and believes in doing away with negative characters. It has taken concepts which seeds in positivity within the environment .It is also a departure from the usual  run of the mill communication that most channels do. Elaborating further on this thought he said, “I think a lot of it is based on our insight about why a viewer visits an English movie channel .The basic premise why people come is for entertainment. It is mostly for the thrill, for  the visuals, the story line and it is for the overall look and feel of Hollywood movies.  So the triggers for watching are very very positive and as a consequence our communication also needs to be very positive.”

Their endeavour at PIX has always been to not just have communication but a conversation based campaign which not just talks to people but encourages people to talk back to them and in that way build an engagement which is beyond the property itself. “So I think these are the building blocks based on which our marketing campaign is designed,” says Yagnik.

Sharing about their experiment with the short format and if it is expected to make  a comeback soon he said , “The essence of this channel is Hollywood movies and the series The Transporter which is still on air does very well for us. We chose it because of it’s association and affinity to Hollywood content because it was a series spun out of a popular franchise. It had excellent theatrical production values. We will keep exploring for such content but it has to be the right fit and the very essence of what Sony PIX stands for.”

Going forward they have properties like Super PIX, PIX premieres and popular franchise , sequels , Pixathons including a Transporter Pixathon. Hence  creating such properties on an ongoing basis to engage their viewers will always be a part of PIX leading to it’s success as a brand.

So start tagging in the most amazing people in your life , tune in to watch the action-packed summer blockbuster; ‘THE AMAZING SPIDERMAN’ on 16th June 2013, participate in the live interactive game and  be the lucky one to win a trip to TAS studios in Los Angeles .

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