Now, higher budget allocated for digital marketing of Bollywood films

January 2019 release Manikarnika: The Queen of Jhansi is set to spend close to Rs 15 crore on marketing the film. Around Rs 8 crore-Rs 9 crore would be spent on marketing the Kangana Ranaut film digitally, sources said.

While it may look like the marketing budget of films have shot through the roof, it isn’t actually so. Spending patterns, however, have seen a definite shift. The growth of internet and digital media has seen a swap between the budget allocated for marketing on television and on the internet and sometimes this has also led to cutting overall publicity costs.

A recent report by media consulting firm Ormax Media says Facebook and YouTube are the most effective media in driving buzz power, at 67 percent and 51 percent respectively. Television ranks at number three at 43 percent. The Facebook-Instagram combine thus has total buzz power of 69 percent.

The report also highlights the influence of media promotions on opening day collections of box office. It says Facebook and Instagram together leads the influence chart with 21 percent contribution, followed by YouTube at 18 percent. Television and in-theatre follow next with 13 percent and 9 percent respectively.

“A very small population of the theatre-going crowd now watch trailers on television. It is mostly trailers watched on the internet that makes one decide whether they want to watch a movie or not. While YouTube achieves upwards of million viewers in case of big films through trailers and song videos, Facebook achieves it through more organic methods like link shares and conversations, apart from initiatives like Facebook live,” said film trade analyst Atul Mohan.

Explaining how the shift to aggressive promotions on digital media has cut down marketing costs, even if marginally, Chandrra said, “Production houses have realised that it is only content communication that works in publicizing a film. An Avengers works in India because people are fascinated by the trailers they see on the internet. The stars don’t travel to Indian malls or appear on a Kapil Sharma show to promote the film. How much did we see Salman travelling to promote Tiger Zinda Hai? Hardly any. Production houses are instead spending on creating unique trailers and teasers and sometimes content for these are from outside the film too.”

According to Chandraa, the shift from television to digital in terms of publicity and marketing can sometimes cut marketing costs up to 20 percent.