There was once an airline ad which said, “We are flying at 36,000 feet. If you don't like our movies, you can walk right out.”
The trick was to catch them when they didn't have an option — which is why this form of advertising is becoming quite the ‘in thing' now with marketers catching them in movie halls.
HT Media, for instance, has been catching the attention of movie goers in a gimmicky way. The entire theatre is blacked out for a few moments, followed by a caption on screen — ‘let there be light.' Subsequently the theatre lights up.
But it's not just on-screen brand promotions. At a Glitz Cinemas theatre in Raipur, toothpaste brand Close Up ran a promotion with the multiplex. Jointly they sold Close Up seats for couples, which were basically blocks of two seats grouped together.
At any PVR theatre foyer, don't be surprised if you spot Apple merchandise, fashion jewellery brands, KFC outlets and LG products — all bundled together. Coalition marketing in cinema theatres is clearly picking up in a big way.
And it's clearly raking in revenue for the theatres. Mr Gautam Dutta, Chief perating Officer, PVR Cinemas, says, “Six years back, cinema advertising was only a Rs 9.5 crore business at PVR. Now it's a Rs 60 crore annual business.”
Mr Dutta says PVR provides a 360 degree solution to brands where customers can interact and engage with them, both onscreen and off-screen. “In fact 85 per cent of the top 100 brands are seen advertising at PVR,” he says.
According to a PwC-FICCI report 2008, 97 per cent of the urban youth prefers to watch movies in cinema halls instead of at home and as much as 23 million Indians watch movies every day.
“The cost of releasing an ad is one-tenth as compared to TV advertisements. Per year there is a captive audience of 26 million in PVR, and they are exposed to 12-13 minutes of advertisement per show,” says Mr Dutta.
Rival theatre firm Cinemax will be closing this year with advertising revenues to the tune of Rs 20-22 crore. “For static advertising our charges would range anywhere between Rs. 15,000 and Rs 1 lakh for a month's activity,” says Mr Sunil Punjabi, CEO, Cinemax India Ltd.
However, Cinemax also offers innovations which drive higher value for the advertiser. Such innovations would have sponsorship values starting at Rs 25 lakh to say, Rs 75 lakh depending on the type of integration and also the period of alliance.
Smart multiplex managers are leveraging every bit of space in their halls - be it brand posters and standees inside the theatre, behind the ticket advertisements, discount offers and advertisements even on the pop corn bags.
And brands are biting. For instance, a whole bunch of insurance schemes were sold piggybacking on the hooplah around the Bollywood blockbuster Kal Ho Na Ho.
The new Zen Estillio was launched with the sound of the car vibrating in the entire auditorium even as the visual ad was unfurled on the screen.
Mr Shashank Srivatava, Chief General Manager, Marketing, Maruti, finds the real efficacy of cinema advertising in locating the eyeballs. “The biggest advantage of cinema advertising is that you can decide your market. You know exactly which city and which income groups you want to target.” He says the company spends 2 per cent of its annual marketing revenue on cinema advertising.