How content platforms are taking the content route to market their content

Indian content players, including over-the-top (OTT) platforms and film production houses, are thriving amid the highly competitive ecosystem with different contenders vying for the attention of consumers with special packages and fresh content.

With their rising popularity due to original content and a growing regional focus, these players have increased focus on promotions to attract a bigger pie of audiences. Other than plain vanilla marketing tactics, their promotional strategies now include a heavy dose of content marketing.

Unlike earlier when these platforms used celebrities in marketing videos or strategically placing hoardings to boost sales and profits, they have now widened their approach as they increase spends on content-led marketing activities, including influencers.

Rishabh Khatter

Rishabh Khatter, Business Head, The Rabbit Hole, told BuzzInContent.com that the promotions of films and series at large have moved away from what they used to be.

It used to be a lot more press junket-led press interviews, music releases, appearances, etc., where the entire weight of those promotions used to sit on the back of the star cast and their ability to pull an audience. But it all started to become very mundane, and the approach started to become the same. Now, promotions are about creating content that engages and connects with the audience and content strategies have been put in place to further rope in new audience cohorts. Posters have become digital cinemagraphs, date announcements have become editorial sketches with narrative and purpose, music releases have become Reel challenges and cast interviews have become gamified in line with interesting themes from the film/ series, he explained.

“The content marketing route taken these days is known as editorial content and this primarily focuses on the different facets and themes of the film/ series and leveraging the star cast to connect with the audience in a relatable, authentic and entertaining way. When audiences sit and watch such editorial content and give it their four-six minutes of time, it's going to land better with recall and awareness of the title, rather than a stereotypical 10-second spot or direct ads that definitely can be missed,” he said.

With an ever-increasing output of content in films and a growing number of digital content providers/OTTs, Eros has started adding influencers and content marketing as part of its media mix.

Ramakrishnan Laxman

Ramakrishnan Laxman, Senior Vice-President Marketing, ‎ErosSTX, said influencers and content marketing have transformed promotions through targeted reach and increased engagement with consumers, allowing it to get hyper-local in different languages and genres. Being a global content house, it engages with these strategies to drive incremental platform usage and boost the brand's growth globally.

He said using the right mix of influencers and content mix allows one to granularly reach out to the right target audience and build an emotional connection between them and the product. It allows targeting the niche audience as per languages and genres.

For Eros Now’ mystery thriller film Halahal, it made an emotional callout from a father looking for the truth behind his daughter’s death. An interesting obituary created a lot of curiosity and was promoted well through digital influencers.

The trends in content marketing in the OTT space are now a lot more encompassing and very strategic in gaining larger audiences.

Khatter believes the narrative is moving to a place where the show creators, showrunners and directors are getting their own pieces in the creation of their assets to push the visionaries behind the main film/series.

“They are being included in the narrative of the whole marketing cycle,” he said.

We saw that in an interesting manner with Anurag Kashyap for ‘Choked’ and Anurag Basu for ‘Ludo’, where both of them, respectively, had their own pieces of content featuring and leveraging them in the date announcement leg of the campaign. Influencers are used to create and feature in multiple stages of the marketing campaign for the films/series to gain their die-hard following.

He added, “Be it through editorial content like ‘‘What If Ludo Was A Person ft. Ashish Chanchlani’’ or Twitter influencers used in hyping up the feud between Anurag Kashyap and Anil Kapoor in AK vs AK, as a trend we have started to see many OTT platforms create editorial properties that run across the year on their social channels as regular weekly programming where all title marketing can come in as content pockets mentioned by the cast.”

‘‘What If Ludo Was A Person ft. Ashish Chanchlani’’:

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Asked what kind of spends the platforms or production houses are allocating for these content-driven activities, he said these vary based on the nature of the title. The spending increase accordingly with tent pole titles of OTT platforms.

What to keep in mind while taking content marketing route for film and web series promotions

Laxman believes the approach should focus on keeping in mind important factors such as target audience, the type of content, language, etc.

“The content should be resonating with the target audience. It should be something that can be trending and in the feed for the desired period. Also at times, the actors in the show themselves work as the biggest influencers,” he said.

For, Khatter it is the authenticity and the relatability of the content.

“There has to be a sense of purpose and subtlety in the promotion aspect of the content being generated. The themes in your film/ series have to come out in your marketing narrative and they all have to be connected in a manner of speaking even if they are all different formats of delivery. Look at the marketing campaign as a story and script of its own, which is empowering facets multiple pillars and facets of said film/series,” he suggested.

Nowadays, the main content slates of OTT players reflect an audience, which makes it easier to market. They have started to develop titles with this in mind to cast a wider net and start becoming a lot more inclusive from the root. And with OTT users of all ages being avid consumers of the internet, Khatter said it's going to be a simpler job getting these audiences to engage with the marketing content created around these titles, be it on any of the mainstream social channels.

Netflix’s content slate promotion:

He pointed out how content-driven marketing strategy has only increased post the pandemic.

“It increased during the pandemic as studios needed to find a way to adapt to the whole situation. The interesting thing is that this pandemic situation was written into the content pieces as well. The audience has become a lot more forgiving of quality of production as such and content marketers took advantage of this to create with frequency and ease on the pocket regarding budgets,” he said.

He said this learning is going to go a long way as many studios have realised that to make an impact, maybe the facade of glitz and glam can be toned down and focus on great crisp writing. Innovation in concepts is what strikes a chord and is very much enough because the digital ecosystem is meant for that, he said.

However, Laxman said digital adoption has accelerated amid the pandemic, but not necessarily towards content marketing.

“Today’s audience is always looking for innovative and entertaining content and content-driven marketing enables brands to engage with them while promoting their offerings. This marketing strategy is here to stay as long as businesses keep investing in unique ideas to entertain and engage consumers,” he added.