Monday, August 8, 2016 4:46PM IST (11:16AM GMT)
Hyderabad, India: The most eagerly awaited Rajnikanth film ‘Kabali’ released on 22 July. The film released in 4500 screens in India, and 400 in America and took the box office by storm and is breaking all records as the biggest film ever. Even before its release the film had reportedly made Rs 200 crores through corporate deals, satellite rights and music sales and is said to have collected over Rs. 600 crore since its release.
One of the major reasons behind the huge hype surrounding Kabali is the producer Kalaipuli Thanu’s unique marketing and social media promotional strategy. He has taken the film’s promotion into a different league with never before done stunts like splashing the film’s poster on an AirAsia plane. With an objective to increase audience engagement on social media, the film’s producers collaborated with Whacked Out Media as their digital partner. Here’s a look at how strong this film was on social media.
The film’s teaser, in multiple languages, was a huge hit with over 40 Million views in less than one month on YouTube. This is way ahead of Salman Khan’s recent blockbuster movie ‘Sultan‘, whose trailer garnered 30.6 million views. Within minutes of having been released the Kabali teaser had over 30,000 tweets on it and it began trending worldwide on Twitter. With such a phenomenal response to the teaser, the film didn’t even require a trailer. And the audio release too was highly appreciated and the song ‘Neruppu Da’ has over 17 million views on Youtube.
The official Facebook page for the movie was launched on March 08 2016. Before the launch of the trailer, the number of likes on Facebook was 94K which increased to 417K once the trailer was launched, a 4.5-fold increase!
Kabali listed in the top trends with the hashtag #Kabalida that had over 5 million impressions. Engagement on twitter was amplified using other hashtags #Kabali, #KabaliFever, #NeruppuDa, #KabaliMania and campaigns such as Fav Rajini dialogue contest (Tamil), Dubsmash & Memes contest and Kabali Audio Launch passes contest (Telugu).
“From releasing the poster, to the initial teaser, to the film’s music release social media is where it all emerged for Kabali. Right from the first look, Kabali became one of the most talked films on social media,” remarks Rama Krishna Veerapaneni, the Managing Director of Whacked Out Media.
The film’s producers along with Whacked out media successfully prevented the film from being leaked online prior to the release. 23 websites and over 15,000 social media links were effectively blocked by Whacked Out. Kabali’s producers got a restraining order from the court that prevented registered internet service providers from illegal downloads. But it’s the unregistered service providers in India who had to be blocked. “Growing piracy is a very serious issue and can cause a lot of loss. Whacked Out Media’s quick action blocked these sites and prevented the movie from leaking online prior to release. Piracy has not affected the movie’s collections, which have been extraordinary,” says producer Thanu.
Kabali’s Triumph on Social Media
