PIX's interactive mega premiere trends records #1 on Twitter

Once again, Sony PIX has captured the digital space with the television premiere of Men in Black 3 on March 10, 2013. The ‘First Interactive Mega Premiere’ which created a lot of buzz among the twitterati became the No. 1 trending topic nationwide.

Sony PIX has always been amongst the front runners when it comes to promoting and marketing their brand, be it their campaigns or movie premiere promotions. When ‘The Adventures of Tintin’ premiered last year on Sony PIX, to spike interest, besides outdoor, trade, print, TV and radio, the channel partnered with Yahoo and Google to come up with interactive games on the digital platform. So, digital medium has always been a front runner for all Sony PIX movie premiere campaigns.

This time around, Sony PIX came up with a very innovative and interactive way to interact with its viewers for the television premiere of Men in Black 3, and going by the numbers it was a massive hit. Sony PIX engaged its viewers through the ‘First Interactive Mega Premiere’ in the social media space. Sony PIX twitter handle appeared during important scenes during the premiere and it created a lot of buzz among the twitterati. ‘#PixMIB3moment’ trended at No. 1 across India and it was No. 5 worldwide when the campaign was on. The excitement of MIB 3 flooded onto twitter while the movie was on air, with nearly 2,00,000 people joining the conversation nationwide in under three hours. The

success of the interactive premiere can be made out from this point that within 5 minutes of the movie premiere it was trending nationally. Also, it was the No. 5 trending topic even the following day. The campaign was essentially forward looking and has for the first time given an opportunity to viewers to interact with a channel, while a movie is on which is unique. Its success clearly shows that this is what the viewers of today want – a two way interaction and not one way.

The huge success of the First interactive premiere also belongs to the very innovative social media campaign carried out by the channel. As a build-up to the television premiere of the film, ‘Anti Alien Day’ was celebrated on March 10, 2013. To thrill and engage Hollywood buffs across the country, PIX created a dialogue on its Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/SonyPIX) with different alien characters that represented various social evils in our society. These aliens had been christened with names like ‘Red Spitterus’ for those who choose to paint the town red with their spitter-splatter amongst other identified aliens that include ‘Screamers Extremus’, ‘Drinker Stinker’, ‘Go Now-here-us’ and many more. The first stage of the Facebook campaign saw the interaction level go up from 2% to 6%. The second stage wherein the audience could eliminate the aliens and become the ‘Man in Black of the Day’ got even more talkability. The sheer success of this campaign can be told by the engagement ratio on the Facebook page itself. The page had over a million likes and many more talking about the channel. An interactive television premiere and a Twitpic contest integrated with outdoor advertising were definitely master strokes!

With Sony PIX venturing into new aspects of exploring the digital medium, they sure pose as stiff competition to the other English movie channels.