4 Experiential Marketing Tactics of popular films that you’ll want to know
To take a product or service to the customer, there are several types in Marketing. In which, there is one type that is gaining prominence of late. The type is none other than Experiential Marketing.
Experiential Marketing goes by this simple theory:
Find your target audience. Know what they expect from you. Create an experience around their expectation. Make them feel touched by your approach.
When you do all the above, you earn not alone customers but their loyalty too.
This has been the beauty of Experiential Marketing.
Always, you could spot interesting instances of Experiential Marketing in various industries. Film Industry is no exception. In my previous article, I shared my views on a couple of movie marketing campaigns that excited me. Today, I present another four tactics implemented for popular films by their producers.
Interactive chatbot by ‘Red Chillies Entertainment’ (RCE) for ‘Ittefaq’ and ‘Raees’:
There is one aspect that has become an integral part in the movie marketing of RCE. It is none other than its Facebook Messenger chatbot.
For example, consider that RCE has come up with content for its upcoming movie. Here, the content refers to a movie poster, teaser, trailer, video song or a promotional video. To take such content to its audience, the chatbot begins chatting with the person who has subscribed to it. The important aspect to note here is that the chat continues only when the person wishes to. If the person responds in a positive manner then the chatbot builds a lively interaction. In the course of the conversation, the bot shares the contents.
For RCE‘s latest movie, ‘Ittefaq’, the chatbot started a chat by posing as ‘Inspector Dev’. ‘Inspector Dev‘ (played by Akshaye Khanna) is one among the main characters in ‘Ittefaq’. This was as in the manner in which the chatbot triggered a conversation by posing as ‘Harry’ for ‘Jab Harry Met Sejal’. In the course of the chat, the bot shared contents like posters, trailer and video song of the movie. Also shared in the chat was a promotional video titled, ‘An interrogation with Karan Johar‘.
Besides these contents, there were a couple of scenarios shared, for the audience to solve. At regular intervals, the chatbot presented the scenarios. Wherein, both the scenarios got based around the genre of the movie i.e. Mystery Thriller.
On the day before the movie’s release day, a short chat reminded to contain SPOILERS related to the movie. On the release day, the chatbot shared the movie’s ticket booking link.
User engagement by the chatbot doesn’t end with the above activities. It also recalls some moments from RCE‘s previous movies. And, it intertwines such moments with special days.
For last year’s Children Day, the chatbot conducted a quiz. In the quiz, few occasions from RCE’s movies accompanied the questions. GIF and JPEG images represented such occasions. Questions were on tapping the inner child that exists within every grown-up. The quiz, as a whole, appeared pleasing.
Later, the chatbot carried out a quiz marking a year since the release of the 2017 Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Raees’. The quiz included some trivial questions about the movie. This quiz to ‘measure’ one’s RQ i.e. Raees Quotient sounded pretty unique and catchy!
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Creepy ‘Insidious‘ mazes in ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ at ‘Universal Studios Hollywood’:
The 2013 ‘Halloween Horror Nights’ featured the maze attraction, ‘Insidious: Into the Further’. The maze was based on the purgatory realm, ‘The Further’ that appears in the ‘Insidious‘ movies. Via this event, the audience got an opportunity to explore the ‘dark world’. They experienced the disquieting atmosphere that they had watched in the ‘Insidious’ movies. Few people of the event were in the guise of the frightening characters of the ‘Insidious’ movies. They scared the hell out of visitors. This made the ambience become even more eerier. This experience that was set as a lead-up to the theatrical release of ‘Insidious Chapter 2’ was a runaway hit.
The maze adventure opened again for the public in 2015 as ‘Insidious: Return to the Further’ and in 2017 as ‘Insidious: Beyond the Further‘. On both the occasions as well the mazes received a positive response from the fans of the franchise.
‘Into The Further A 4D Experience’ mobile tour for ‘Insidious Chapter 3’:
Before the theatrical release of ‘Insidious Chapter 3’, its producers organized a tour. As part of the tour, they designed a model house with dark interiors. The interiors did resemble the inner part of the houses that appear in the ‘Insidious’ movies. The model house took on tour to various cities for audience visit. The cities include Chicago, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Dallas and New York. Entry into the model house was free for the audience. Audience who had visited the house felt engaged with some genuine scares. Later, using an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset, they experienced a horror segment. The clip, utilized in the segment, featured Dr. Elise Rainier who guided the viewer into the ‘Further’.
Click here to watch the audience’s experiences!
Later, the producers released the video of ‘Into The Further A 4D Experience’ in online. Like the response to the maze attractions, audience had rendered thumbs up to this campaign as well.
‘360 degree’ videos and an interactive chatbot by ‘Sri Thenandal Films’ (TSL) for ‘Mersal’:
Like RCE, TSL too had introduced interactive chatbots for their 100th production, ‘Mersal’. In one of my articles, I had briefed the creation of customized ‘Mersal‘ posters using the chatbot. Post which, TSL had extended the utility of the bot further. The chatbot had conducted a quiz titled, ‘Mersal Match Meter’. Later, it also carried out a quick chat to make people share their feedback about the movie and rate the same. Like RCE, TSL’s chatbot also shared a ticket booking link for the movie. The entire interactive chatbot episode of TSL was quite unique and engaging!
Besides launching an interactive chatbot, TSL released a couple of ‘360 degree‘ videos. TSL teamed up with ‘Karpita‘ to render and unveil the videos. One video presented the speech of the Tamil Film Star Vijay in the ‘Mersal‘ audio launch function. Whereas, the other featured the live in concert of the legendary musician A.R.Rahman in the same function.
The efforts of TSL had appealed well to the die-hard fans of both the Tamil cinema stars.
Conclusion:
Above examples are among the finest of Experiential Marketing campaigns in Film Industry. Because, the movies not only grabbed audience’s attention but also obtained their loyalty.
Application of the theory mentioned in this article seems evident in the tactics.
So, here I end my article. Hope you find the scenarios jotted down in this article to be informative. Please let me know your opinion about the write-up in the comments section!