When we promote an Indian IP we promote the main character. India is seeing a revolutionary change in building new IPs. Most of the Indian IPs (especially in animation) in the recent past were build on mythological characters. There was definitely a reason why the promoters chose myth characters, because there was no need to promote the character as most of them were already established in the minds of the viewers. The promotion cost was also reduced to some extent apart from the fact that the look and feel was promoted individually.
The most important part while promoting the Indian IP is the engagement with the target audience. More the engagement more the connect and more the publicity. The strategies should be build by becoming part of target audience. If the kids like to dance then build a strategy with the content having a kids song that can connect the target audience and they get hooked on to it. Connecting with the character is the best strategy.
Marketing strategies have evolved over a period with the invention of new platforms. We have seen a paradigm shift from print to digital medium of marketing. You can catch the eyeballs on digital platforms rather than print media especially in urban areas. Print definitely is one of the best and largest platforms to have a brand recall brand building. For Indian IPs we have seen major focus on digital platform especially in the animation sector. Our target audience is pre-school and school going kids and for whom the influencers are parents. To reach out to the parents of that age group it’s better to use digital platforms like social media or information media. Also the kids are influenced by the TV ads and the presence on digital platform around the content that they like to watch digitally. All these things are kept in mind while building the strategies for promoting Indian IPs.
The first step for promoting an Indian IP is to identify the right target audience for the content. The content can get promoted only if you have the right target audience engaged with the content. For pre-school kids it would be best to attach the character to milk which they consume daily or for school kids the character can be attached to a pencil or a pen or games that are prevailing during that time. Once the target audience is identified then we can have marketing strategies around that as the whole idea is to reach directly to your consumer. There are various levels of discussion and action points.
We have seen some remarkable response from kids while we promoted the song of Little Singham and the tag line ‘Ata Mazhi Satakli’. It connected with the kids and they enjoyed using it. School contact program with that target group will definitely work and we are planning for the same shortly. A blast with the Bollywood celebrity, like we did for Little Singham with Rohit Shetty, will be crowd puller. The onus is on the content developers to create popularity and awareness about the show and the characters. Wherever we go, we speak about the character and the making of it and don’t leave any stone unturned to make the content popular. We as the IP holders for the property Little Singham have built a laundry list of Do’s and Don’ts for the merchandising items so that those items also connect directly to the consumers. We are working on all the fronts and taking care of even the minute details for promoting the IP and making it a success.
(This article has been contributed by Reliance Animation COO Tejonidhi Bhandare and AnimationXpress.com does not necessarily subscribe to these views).