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Two years ago, I was invited by a Professor friend, to give a guest lecture at the local University to students who were about to graduate as filmmakers. The objective was to offer them my 2 cents of advise on the business and marketing side of the internet for their films.

The lecture to my relief went smoothly and was followed with a power packed Q&A after. I wish I could have video taped it for PFC’s budding filmmakers and aspirants. Since the lecture, two years ago, it gives me great pleasure to read an email I receive occasionally or so from these students, many of them making shorts, documentaries and even indies, thanking me for the lecture and mentioning how they followed those principles to success for each movie they make.

Yet, it frustrates me no end, that the industry most dear to me - Bombay, still is quite behind in understanding and applying the usage of internet to their complete benefit. It pains me no end, how Bollywood, is yet to put thought, strategy and action to make the best use of the internet.

I went through my lecture notes last night and have modified it for the current post, including in these my past experiences, conversations and observations of the last 15 years.

I hope this helps clear some misconceptions that filmmakers, marketing and business executives from the Bombay film industry may have and I sure do hope it brings in a positive change however slight or small a step it may be.

The Six Mantras for Internet and where Bollywood is going wrong

1. The Internet is NOT a Private Property.

In December of 1998, one of the top five medical equipment manufacturing companies in the USA, a Fortune 500 company, invited me to help them on their e-Commerce website. I was charged up when I got to know their ideas and quickly formed a team to dive into the project.

The site we built was quite slick and much ahead of it’s time, featuring a downloadable software which allowed their buyers to easily build a product using drag and drop features to join various component-parts to build a product and order them instantly. The problem was not many were visiting the site, inspite of such slick features that reduced one’s operation time drastically.

Nurses from hospitals incharge of buying equipments were still calling the client to order parts by phone or find if a mix and match of certain parts was possible to build a product they had in mind. This amounted to approximate 40 minutes of call time. And had the nurses used the software it could be done in a matter of minutes.

Six months past the website, I was called back in, to help them find what was wrong with the website and why wasn’t it being used. Everyone was so damn sure that it was a fantastic tool we had built for the company, but no one had a clue why there was hardly any usage of their website tool.

For over two weeks I travelled across America, visiting various hospitals and health care institutions, the customers of my client… meeting doctors, nurses, buyers, managers… until the day when I was gathering my notes on the breakfast table in Austin, Texas on a Sunday morning getting ready to catch the noon flight back home.

The notes on the table in front of me, contained a lot many things, ideas, suggestions and insights, but somehow I wasn’t getting the core picture - the true “Ah!” meaning from it. The one fundamental principle that all these could be tied back into.

It’s then I noticed a couple with their kid sitting on a table next to me. The couple would get up, go to the buffet table get their breakfast and come back. The mother always bringing a glass of orange juice for the kid, who seemed to relish it. The kid would drink up the juice in no time and ask for more, and wait for the mother to finish her portion who would then go back to the buffet table, get another portion and a new glass of juice for the kid and come back. The kid would lap the juice up in no time and ask for more. Again the waiting for the mother or father to finish their portion, who would then go back to the buffet table and repeat the process. This went on for about three or four times. And I wondered why did the kid wait and not just go to the buffet table to get that damn juice.

At the same time, at the table of an elderly couple, the old man asked his wife if she wanted another of those delicious muffins. The old lady looked at the buffet table and went “Nah! I don’t wanna walk all the way back there”… and they got up and left.

It’s then the dots connected all the notes of the past two weeks. After launching their website, there was a certain spike in the number of customers using my client’s downloadable software. The initial adopters of the tool were so amazed they started talking about it on the various website, chats, message boards and forums. Then download links of the software started appearing on these forums, much to the disdain of my client. They did not want this. They wanted the software to be downloaded ONLY from their site. They started demanding all such links be removed from the sites. They demanded. They were forceful. They got what they wanted.

And within a few weeks the number of hits on their site fell sharply. In short they had crushed themselves the chain reaction building towards promoting their very own product.

Why was the software not allowed to be downloaded from anywhere else on the internet? Nobody could have done anything with it except build the component they wanted to and press the order button which would inturn order the component at the client via the internet. Nothing else could be done with it actually and the tool was trademarked, so no competitor could even copy, modify and use it.

The problem lay in thought. Not in the product. The internet is a place to spread it out rather than have a place with tall fences around it (of course you can if you run a gangster organization).

This is a major problem I have in my working with various clients in the last ten years. Shifting the thought and understanding of the internet and how it can be used for gains. Shifting that thought of the clients from “how it should be used”

As soon as one understands that the Internet is a public arena and cannot be treated as a private property, the quicker, major companies have noticed the gains that follow. The shift in their understanding brings in a drastic change in strategies and action plans.

Everyone wants a “chain reaction”, “a buzz” for the movie. That will never happen until your basic understanding of the internet shifts from “I own it” to “It is free for everyone to use”.

Clients have fought with me… “How can I allow my movie for everyone to use… It is MINE”… Ofcourse it is. But to get people to watch your movie, you can’t lock down the various promotions, news, items, materials etc. and treat EVEN THOSE as your private property online. You have to let these out and loosen them free on the internet. The sooner you get this, the greater your returns.

2. It is NOT “All for One” BUT “One for All”

Most of the production houses are making this basic mistake. Eros is, Rajshri is, even UTV is amongst other production houses.

Each of these companies in Bollywood wants all internet surfers to come to them (All for one). A few examples of these include:

Eros has a YouTube account where it puts up its movie trailers. But it does not allow internet surfers and those who have websites to copy the embed code so others can show the same trailers off their sites. WHY? After all if - anyone on the internet plays the trailer via the embed code, it will actually be RUN off YouTube’s servers off Eros’s account. So what is the problem?

This basic lack of understanding the inner workings of the internet is costing Eros and the filmmakers who market their movies via Eros and other production houses. For example Drona. Without getting into the quality of the movie, lets focus on what Eros did for Drona online. Eros put Drona’s trailer on YouTube and blocked any user from copying and pasting the Drona trailer anywhere else on the internet.

UTV did it in Jodha Akbar.

Rajshri’s are doing it for their latest family love story.

And it has cost them. If web analysts are brought in by these companies to gauge their internet policies, they will be shocked to realize how much damage these companies have done to their own products on the internet.

Unless and until you are a Google or MSN or Yahoo, you can’t expect (and it is almost criminal to think thus), that the world will come to your website to watch what you have to offer (All for One). The internet is much more sophisticated and effortless for people to follow this line of thought.

Rather the flow of the product information has to flow from inside out - to everyone out there on the internet. One for all. Let the videos, trailers, promos be copied and pasted and discussed all over the internet. This is the best way to get the word out.

The internet is other words should be visualized as the “infinite”.

Every web-surfer has developed and sunk into their own ways and methods of surfing the internet and visiting the sites they want to. If in this environment you introduce the process of “forcing them” to come your site for the information you want to provide, rather than making it freely available at the sites of their convenience, you will lose them before you can say KaBoom.

Your filmmakers will never get to be in direct touch or even be able to identify their core audience. Every blog, site or community group has it’s hardcore fan base. Your “All for One” policy is a direct negative action to make them come to your site.

It doesn’t work. Not in terms of hits. Which you “may” get, but in terms of actually being able to identify and forecast how your film’s sales via the internet audience will be.

The core audience becomes virtually undistinguishable once they land on a portal or say your site which produces a wide range of movies for a wide range of audience. How are you going to get the right statistics for sales projection for a particular movie via the hits on your website?

Tragically statistics will never be discussed by your web developers.

And more tragic is you’ve once again created a wide chasm between your product and your probable audience scattered on the other sites.

Flow and spread your information out. Restricting it only will result in barring your very probable audience, who will eventually end up watching your movie on DVD rather than buying a ticket at the theater. Your product has a shelf life of three days, which makes it all the more important to understand the internet and these six mantras of Internet marketing.

3. Your website will never work like Instant Coffee

In the summer of 2007, I received a call from a filmmaker who’s movie was about to release. I’d never spoken to the person before. As all such calls are, the topic was building a website for his movie. I asked him when his movie was expected to release. He said - in a month. I asked him why he wanted a website and what good would it do him, since we were this close to the movies release. His answer: he wanted the website to attract one million visitors online, which could easily be done on the internet, so everyone would come to know about his movie. I politely declined giving him various reasons, which I hope he understood well enough, though later I found he did go ahead and spend a ton of money to get his website done by the usual suspects in Bollywood.

The movie, even though well made, was a flop.

The mantra here I’m going to reveal is worth what I charge a couple of hundred dollars an hour as consultation fees. But here it is for free and I’m quite positive, a few months from now many of the filmmakers or web companies will actually pay us the money for the same mantra we’ll reveal to them. I don’t know why, perhaps it’s human nature.

And the revelation is: Your website will get dismal hits and have no impact on the sales of tickets however beautiful, flashy and truckloads of money you pour into it - if you are going live within less than six months into your movie’s release.

I don’t know how much more frank and openly can I have stated this. But if you are building your movie’s website within less than six months of the movie’s release, you are much better off donating it to an orphanage and in the process earn some good karma, rather than fill up the pockets of your website builders who will not blink for a second when they tell you “What a fantastic idea. We will build you a fantastic website”

A couple of my friends in the past have been upset when they approached me with similar situations (different products not movies). But we at Utible just don’t do it. To put it plainly - it is unethical and dishonest to keep your clients in the dark, clients who have no clue about the way the internet works.

How will you get web surfers to visit your site?
Perhaps by advertising, perhaps by putting banners on other websites, perhaps sending a media kit to the media to talk about it - Notice what has happened here - your focus has instantly shifted from your movie to promoting your website. Bad idea again!

Do you know that the maximum of movie website DO NOT have more than a 1000 total visitors! And even an average blogger worth his salt writing a few times a week gets a 1000 visitors within a few hours each day! And above all the blogger didn’t spend a dime to create his site!!!

Why then is money still being poured so foolishly into a website with all its bells and whistles?

It takes 3 - 5 weeks for a search engine crawlers to search and get your site on their radar. The crawls become less and less the less frequently your website is updated. The crawls become negligible once your movie has released and now you are not doing ANYTHING on the website.

I would like to ask all executives and marketing personnell who sanction website budgets to do this:

Take ANY movie your production house has produced and then you had the website built for it. Go to Google or Yahoo or any search engine of your preference. Type in the name of the movie. Click Enter.

Now watch the results. On what darn page of the search results does your website show up? And which are the sites which come up before you, specially those which get listed on pages one and two.

What does this mean? Even the search engines do not consider your website important rather they prefer those sites which have more material, more content, much more updates about YOUR movie.

So what does this mean? Where did we go wrong? Well, it means you are not aware or were not told by those building your website that you build your hits- you attract new people to your site primarily through search engines - for free! And that will never happen in a few weeks.

The internet should not be treated like Instant coffee - snap - you make it. snap. you have it. It’s a ridiculous misconception

Which leads me to the point on - spending more money online for advertising your website - Why do it? - Your movie is a month away, rather spend the money on banner ads for the movie NOT for the website.

The focus SHOULD be the movie, NEVER, the website.

But there is this whole excitement of building a Taj Mahal, a beautiful website that will attract visitors who will fall in love with the way the movie is projected on the website. Out of a billion websites and millions added each week on the internet, nobody will ever know about your site, if this is how you pursue your web strategy.

Unless ofcourse your Taj Mahal has a Shah Rukh Khan or a Aamir Khan in it. Else forget it. The Bombay Paanwallah website (which was an instant hit once it went live) probably gets more hits a day than your ten movie websites combined.

The one question though nobody asks at such web site discussion meetings is HOW? How will people on the internet become AWARE of the website? Is it realistically possible to get a million or half a million people to come visit and interact instantly? A safe answer is no. Unless you are Digged a thousand times or someone has Stumbled Upon your site a few hundred times. (refer Digg, Stumble Upon on the internet)…

Summing up your One Taj Mahal is a bad idea but a 1000 McDonalds is pure genius. Think about it, the next time there is an impulse to go for it.

4. The Fanboys are your best friends. If not, let your movie R.I.P.

In 2002, someone in India started a site about an upcoming movie that she was really excited about. Every alternative day, she would diligently search the internet for any news remotely related to the movie. If she found a mention, a picture or a small snippet about the movie, she would scan it and post it on the website. A discussion board was attached. It was steadily attracting more and more readers by the day. The director of the movie was quite impressed by the site and the collection of fans of his upcoming movie at one place. So as the shooting progressed he started emailing here new pics, videos and stories about the shooting. It started a frenzy. People just couldn’t get enough of it.

Pretty soon the movie was completed and ready for release. Then the producers of the movie woke up. They wanted to build their own website of the movie… with “ALL” the material the fan had collected and published over six months - for free! They threatened to get the site shut down unless all the material was removed.

Shattered the poor girl removed the material. The producers set up a new website. Then started the negative lash back. The forums still on the girl’s website became an angry yelling ground for the fanboys and girls. Lashing out at the film’s producers. The shit hit the fan. There were talks of boycotting the movie etc. etc. Well the movie did release, and was an average hit.

But at the end of it all, it was found that the hits on the producers’ created website was less than 3% of the fan’s site. Which means the producers actually snipped the pipeline which was supplying them with customers and more potential ticket buyers.

There’s another story. A few years ago, a blogger in the USA mentioned something about a movie which was about to start production. It was a funny blog. A couple of other bloggers and websites picked it up. Then a few more bloggers picked that story up from those sites. It started a chain reaction. A few websites started a contest ‘What is the story of this movie?’. A few bloggers started a comic strip. A few sites even started contests like the Funniest comment on the movie for the week.

Over a million sites and blogs were talking about the movie. And the producers had not yet spent a single dime on the marketing!!! A year later the movie released. One million fanboys converged to watch the movie in its opening weekend. Some found it real good B grade stuff. Some found it bad. Almost all agreed it wasn’t a classic, yet it was a real fun to go and watch it.

The movie was Snakes on a Plane. And it was successful purely because of the fanboys.

It is time Bollywood starts taking these fans seriously. These are your messengers who will spread the word about your movie. These are the people who have websites or discussion boards or blogs, which are in turn visited by a few hundred to a million visitors each day. This is your dream. Connect with your fans. Identify your markets. Connect with them and inturn you will connect with each of the fans who visit those sites and over and over…

Tragically Bollywood has not yet understood or refuses to understand the fanboy concept. The kid standing next to you could as well be holding the golden ticket to the success of your movie. It is time you opened your eyes to this plain raw fact of the internet.

I don’t see anyone doing it. Except, perhaps, Anurag Basu. His latest Kites already has a few blogs being built by those who follow his work and who diligently are collecting every piece of information available online to plug it into their website. There is a lack of punch. But just a little bit of grease can set the wheels rolling.

5. Your Website Developer is NOT your Web Strategy Advisor

Your website developing company IS NOT the expert on planning your internet promotion strategy and neither is your marketing team who handles the traditional forms of marketing for your movie. There are many people I know (many on a personal level) working as CEOs, VPs, Brand Strategists, Marketing managers… that are so easily confused over this, having a quite common misconception that - the company building the website, for their brand or product, is the go-to-guy for receiving expertise on Internet promotions and marketing.

Bad Idea!

A web developer’s expertise lies in building the best website for you that suits your needs and demands. The developer should not, under any circumstance be handling the critical and foundational responsibility of building the internet marketing strategy. Website Development and Website Strategy are two entirely different things.

A developer builds a hundred odd websites a year. He is and should not be concerned over the success or failure of the website built (unless there is a technical coding angle to it). Whereas an Internet Marketing Specialist follows and track thousands of websites every single week, keeping tabs on new products and brands launched, the strategies behind them, their impact, trends, hits, demographics, identifying the core audience for each site amongst a million other data points.

In the past I’ve seen many website developing companies offering advise on the website promotions and launches… and the clients simply follow them like sheep. The clients’ have no idea and think it is the best advise they are getting. Many times IT IS NOT! Sadly, seen in many cases, the website building company is there to make money and will definitely not let the opportunity go - if they can convince you to build a site with a million features even if at times there is be no need for all those features!

About six months ago an independent filmmaker approached me to talk about promoting their movie. Upon further questioning I found the filmmaker had already spent a couple of lakhs (in rupees) on a website for the movie. The release of his movie was barely three weeks away. Upon frankly asking him as to why he has approached us, his answer was “To make my movie and website famous on the internet” - A fundamental mistake made again and again, film after film, by each of the filmmakers and film production houses - big or small.

Your Internet strategy needs to be laid down BEFORE the shooting of the movie has even begun. NOT three weeks before the movie’s release. What Bollywood has not yet got a grip on is that the internet can be a much cheaper form of creating a buzz for their movies in contrast to the costs for promotion on television and radio. The difference is, it requires time and a few people. And the time begins when the movie is being made, not after it is ready for release.

And that strategical plan is built for you by Internet Marketing Experts or Consultants, not the company that builds your website. Approach a Web Marketing guru much before you decide who will build your website. Not Vice versa.

6. It is not HOW MANY hits, but WHO hit YOU

Earlier this year, someone I know, working in the NY office of a Bollywood production company, proudly told me how an upcoming movie of his company, had received over a 100,000 hits. It was their movie’s trailer over one lakh people had seen it on the site they had published the trailer on. To skip a very sure to happen nasty argument, I stayed silent and applauded the achievement, wished him the best and moved on.

Four weeks later the movie released and was declared an instant colossal flop. A week later the same person questioned me “Where did the one lakh viewers who saw the trailer go?”

And that is the question you should ask yourself and your web team when they produce statistics of the number of hits of your new movie’s website or images or stills or blogs…. Does this number (of hits) means so many tickets will be sold for sure? Does this mean you now have a sure base of X number of customers from online who will see the movie?

If your panel says yes, fire them immediately. Just mention “Thank You” behind the check you send me for giving you this valuable advise.

In a study we did for a client last year, we were contracted to study a list of sites to study the nature of visitors and hits and the conversion of visitors to movie ticket buyers for movies that were talked about on the sites.

We divided the movie sites into three groups. The first group were the portals - that had news, business, commerce and movie sections on them. On the other hand we had a second group of websites we analyzed that were focussed on cinema purely and a third group of sites that published news, gossips, pictures (some nude-semi nude) of models/actors, videos et. all.

What we found was a BIG eye opener and in sense helped me understand better the nature of PFC.

we found and to our surprise that a portal that published, news, business and movies got less than 0.5% conversion of it’s readers - who hit the movie sections - to customers for a movie, to buy a ticket. Literally it meant that only 0.5 or less percent of the people who hit the movie section of the portals would actually go out and see the movie. These were the portals who charged the highest for advertisements on the basis on high number of page views.

The third group didn’t fare any better. The visitors in this group who would go out and buy the ticket for a movie published on these sites was between 10% to 15%. The third group had the second highest number of hits and page views behind the movie sections of the portals.

But it was the second group we found that had the biggest bite. And it left us stumped. Between 50 to 75% of the visitors who visited the focussed on cinema without the bells and whistles, would go to watch the movie, buy a ticket. In some cases a few sites had a conversion of as high as 90%!!! The number of hits and page views on this second group was the lowest.

when numbers were churned, it was found, that ticket sale revenues came in highest from the second group - the sites which were focussed on pure discussion of cinema, followed by the first group the portals and in the end the third group.

What does it all mean?

It is not about the number of hits. But who! Your target - the concentrated base that will read about your movie and will buy the ticket. The focus is to find your target audience wherever they may be for the movie you would like to promote to. Rather than play a lottery game on portals or sites which offer a high but diluted target, find where your concentrated base is. Those are the sites to go for.

Well… this has got quite long… so it’s time to end this post here. If you have any questions please feel free to contact or comment in.

Besides PFC, I’m also the founder of Utible Inc, that offers a host of internet and entertainment related consulting services to clients across the globe. For business inquiries please use the contact form to get in touch with us.

Filed Under  Op-Ed , business, Commerce, Internet, marketing

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