The Bollywood movie ‘Special 26′ released recently is not only a success at the box office but also managed to create an effective presence on social media. Here, we get to know more about the social media strategies implemented for the movie by Ignitee Digital, the agency responsible for the social media.
Bollywood is no more debating on the effectiveness of social media. Today movies that are about to release begin campaigning with a pre-launch buzz few months before on social media and at the same time try new strategies to interact with fans. The influx of creative movies has thrown up a real challenge for their social media initiatives. Special 26, also known as Special Chabbis was one such recent Indian heist film that got rave reviews from fans as well as the critics. The second movie from Neeraj Pandey’s kitty and produced by Viacom 18 Motion Pictures focused on social media to build a presence and create buzz about the movie.
The movie that stars Akshay Kumar and Kajal Aggarwal in the lead roles with Jimmy Shergill, Manoj Bajpai and Anupam Kher in supporting roles created an impressive presence on Facebook and Twitter.
Special 26 Is Special On Social Media Too
Special 26 Facebook strategies
The pre-buzz initiative launched during the last month of 2012 threw up a major challenge before the social media team.
“We were given clear instructions that we had to focus on the image makeover of Akshay Kumar. Akshay’s previous movie Joker had a very different character compared to Special 26. Even though Special 26 was a con movie, it had Akshay in a role that was never seen by his fans. So we focused on content and played with the real world content”, shared Sufiyan Khan, Senior Account Executive at Ignitee Digital Services Pvt. Ltd. who was responsible for managing the social media activities of the movie along with his team.
The team at Ignitee focused on content, cashed in from Neeraj Pandey’s previous success story of “A Wednesday” and built content on real life con stories. No fancy apps were created but small apps that tied up with the objective were created like “Which Type Of Con Artist Are You” and “Akshays Special 26”.
“We were very clear that we didn’t want to create any fancy apps but we created a couple since that connected with the objective of the movie. “Which Type Of Con Artist Are You” was a simple quiz where as a fan, you had to answer some questions and based on your answers the app would tell you what kind of con are you.
The second app was created during the Republic Day. Since the number 26 was synonymous, we thought of recruiting 26 people who would be in Akshay’s team. The app asked questions on India and why one thinks that he/she should be in the team”, added Sufiyan.
In addition to this, Sufiyan shared that Facebook was used effectively for the release of the movie trailer.
“For the trailer launch, we tied up with a 3rd party app. The Facebook app that had the exclusive trailer, had a tweet button embedded called “Pay with Tweet. So once a fan clicks on the button, a tweet would pop up and he would have to publish on Twitter to see the exclusive video that was released on Facebook 4 hours before the normal launch.”
A smart way to only promote the exclusive trailer on Facebook and also to integrate Twitter. Also, a great way for fans to earn some exclusive content.
Special 26 Twitter strategies
Along with Facebook, Ignitee focused immensely on Twitter keeping in mind the fan following Akshay has on Twitter. Along with constant updates about the movie and the cast, the team planned to do something real similar to the Facebook activities.
“Akshay for the first time had sung a song in the movie. So we thought why not ask followers on Twitter what would they like Akshay to sing for them. #Akshaysingforme which was created for this Twitter campaign trended worldwide and created a lot of buzz about Special 26.”
The activity on Twitter became aggressive as the release date of movie came close. The account was not only retweeting tweets of the active cast of Twitter but also ran contests related to the movie. People on Twitter were asked why they liked Special 26, whose place would you raid and what will you find, etc. and some of the amazing responses won movie tickets, gift hampers, etc. Along with this, the hashtag #Special26 kept trending for more than 48 hours all through the weekend.
It is interesting to see how Special 26 played within its limits on social media and still created a massive buzz along with an impressive presence. Well, you can expect such performance when you know that it was the same agency that worked hard to create an impressive presence for Gangs Of Wasseypur on social media.
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