Importance of Web Based Tools for Promotion of Movies: A Survey on Indian Movie Production Houses

Importance of Web Based Tools for Promotion of Movies: A Survey on Indian Movie Production Houses

Suresh Sannapu (Jaypee Business School, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India), Akshat Singh Parihar (Jaypee Business School, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India), Gaurav Kandwal (Jaypee Business School, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India) and Karan Kakkar (Jaypee Business School, Jaypee Institute of Information Technology, Noida, India)
Copyright: © 2014 |Pages: 12
DOI: 10.4018/ijom.2014040105
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Abstract

This paper gives a description of the empirical study investigating the impact of promotions using Web based tools by Indian Movie production houses. Evolution of movie promotion starting with use of traditional methods for the first movie to the near dependence on social media to promote the latest movies produced in India has been chronologically presented. Critical role of web based tools and their synchronization with other media tools in contemporary movie promotion has also been elaborated. As Indian film industry is witnessing impeccable advancements in areas like technology and marketing digitalization, this research shows the use of online tools for attracting consumers. The key research objective is to find out the ability of the production houses to attain maximum customer attraction through various online tools like Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and YouTube. Data has been collected both from primary and secondary sources. Regression analysis has been used to depict the relationship between likes, comments and shares with the number of campaigns. Given the huge contribution of movies to Indian economy, ever increasing competition in this industry and increasing popularity of Web based tools; this study aims to benefit multiple stakeholders including movie producers, individual investors and all other entities related to movie making business such as music companies, distributors, exhibitors and single screen owners.
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1. Introduction

1.1 Indian Film Industry

Indian film industry has completed its 100 years of existence on 13th May 2013. An industry which started with silent films in 1913 with limited target audience has now started using 3D and other latest VFX technologies targeting audiences all across the globe. The first film released by Indian Film industry ‘Raja Harishchandra’ earned just a few thousand rupees where as a recent Bollywood movie ‘Chennai Express’ earned approximately 342 crore rupees (Net worldwide, 226 crores India collections plus 116 crores overseas collections) (Adarsh, 2013) . This shows a huge growth that Indian Film industry has experienced since its origin, as far as revenue is concerned. Not only this, the industry has experienced growth in every aspect as India is accountable for almost a quarter of total number of feature films made annually worldwide (Pan & Sinha, 2010). Initially, productions were created to produce movies but now individual producers have also started investing their money in making movies and earning profit or bearing losses themselves. Currently, corporate investors are also investing their money in movie production.

1.2 History of Indian Cinema

‘Dadasaheb Phalke’ is known as the father of Indian cinema. He was the one who made ‘Raja Harishchandra’ and screened it in the Coronation theatre, Mumbai on April 21, 1913. It became a big hit and was later translated into eight languages. Further, Mr. Phalke released more mythological like, ‘Bhasmasur Mohini’ and ‘Kaliya Mardan’. He was associated with almost every movie that was released at that time. In 1931, the first sound film Alam-Ara directed by Ardeshir Irani, was released at Majestic cinema in Mumbai. In total 28 films were made during the year. After that, Indian cinema has never looked back and is continuously rising. Now a days movie making is not just a creative process, but also a serious money making business. Major Film Industry in India comprises of Hindi films which is known as Bollywood. Many other regional film industries also exists in India viz. Telugu, Tamil, Bengali, Marathi, and Punjabi. Certain neologisms have been coined for different regional industries such as Tollywood for Tamil & Telugu film industry, Tollygunge for the Bengali film industry. The Bengali film industry is notable for nurturing director Satyajit Ray, an internationally renowned filmmaker and winner of many National & International awards. Tollywood has also nurtured many eminent personalities such as Rajnikanth, Mani Ratnam & A.R Rahman who have contributed enormously to Indian cinema.

1.3 Promotion of Movies

Earlier, movies were promoted by airing movie trailers on TV channels, advertising through Radio stations and by putting some hoardings in metro cities and posters in small towns & cities. The first Bollywood movie which earned more than 1 Cr INR was ‘Mother India’, also nominated for Oscar awards, was barely promoted as compared to the promotional practices adopted now a days. The success of the movies depends on factors such as the latest trends, cultures (Thorsten, 2004), ideas and is based on the actor’s face value as well. Presence of star actors like Dilip Kumar, Rajesh Khanna, Rajender Kumar and Amitabh Bachchan in a movie guaranteed the success of that movie (Nahta, 2011). Some movie stars had an aura to drive the success of the movie along with them (Elberse, 2007). Parallel Cinemas were promoted by National Film Development Corporation with the help of state funding. Now movies are promoted in many ways such as promotion through hoardings and banners, promotion on television shows, radio channels, public places, malls, concerts, through press conferences, media interactions, tie-ups with branded production houses & corporate, through controversies and one of the most important ways in today’s era, promotions through web based tools. There are more than 400 production houses in India involved in film production business and with the increase in the overall internet users in India usage of web based tools by Indian movie production houses has also increased. Research shows that it is impossible to create buzz among teen and youth groups without the use of web based tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. There is an inevitable need of using web based tools to promote movie among youth of urban and sub-urban societies.

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