“Advtg generates 13% of the overall revenue of PVR”

How about entering the movie hall with a puff of jasmine fragrance, treating your taste buds with small cups of tea, experiencing your favourite beauty products and getting dropped at home in the new Mercedes? You are not living in a kingdom of dreams but it is PVR’s attempt to woo consumers through innovative cinema advertising, keeping in mind the changing needs of all advertisers.

India is one of the largest producers of movies in the world and draws four billion footfalls on an average every year. According to recent industry reports, 97 per cent of urban youth prefer to watch movies in cinema halls instead of home and 23 million Indians watch a film everyday. Cinema delivers an unmatched quality of exposure and caters to a large audience in a region specific way.

“There has been evolution of cinema advertising over the years. Earlier, brand used to advertise on cinema because television was not as wide reaching and popular as today. Nowadays, modern cinema is ensuring very high quality of reproduction of the film itself. Many small brands are making their presence felt on cinemas at the multiplexes because targeting becomes a lot easier due to greater homogeneity of profile. It has assumed greater value as an additional medium in which brands can create a larger than life impact,” said Ramanujam Sridhar, Founder CEO, brand-comm.

Strong impact & cost effective
It becomes a perfect platform for advertisement because it is strong on impact and cost efficient with the least amount of media spill-over. It amplifies the brand differentiation and allows to dissect the audiences geographically, age-wise and genre wise.

“This medium can deliver an impact that is unmatchable and cannot be benchmarked against any other mass media or personalised media simply because of the captive audience. While captive is a negative word but we hold audience attention for about three hours on the screen or our premises, which no other medium does,” said Gautam Dutta, Chief Operating Officer, PVR.

He stated that when a person comes to watch a movie, he/she is in the best mood to possibly imbibe any advertising. It is a unique audience capture opportunity because people are in a voluntary surrender mood and receptive to any kind of brand messaging.

PVR garners close to 3.5 crore footfalls and with the recent Cinemax deal, the figure will be close to 6 crore and by next year, the company plans to touch about 8 crore footfalls.

“As a brand, PVR has the opportunity to touch all the five senses of a consumer. We can get consumers to see, hear, smell, taste and touch a brand. Between the combination of on-screen and off-screen, with the opportunities we have, we can get the consumers completely immersed in a brand,” added Dutta.

Innovation is key
Maruti Suzuki used the 5.1 surround sound technology of PVR Cinemas to promote the launch of New Zen. An ignition sound was played from one side of the theatre speakers, making the audiences believe as if someone had just started a car. Right after that, a visual was played on the screen showing the new Zen running from one end of the screen to the other end, making the viewer’s believe as if the car just took a round of the auditorium and drew away. Odonil branded one entire auditorium and the moment viewers entered the door, they could smell jasmine fragrance.

Advertising generates close to 13 per cent of the overall revenues of the PVR Group. Electronics, automobiles and banking and financial institutions are categories that regularly advertise with PVR. According to Dutta, there isn’t a category which has been missing out with advertising on cinema –be it BMW, Mercedes, Rolex, Gucci, Longines, Airtel, Aircel, Vodafone, etc. However, Sridhar said that a lot of advertising depends upon the objectives of the advertisers. If the product is for consumption in malls, or anything which is an impulse purchase, or if a brand wants trials, then it makes sense to advertise through multiplexes.

Pay per eyeball
All agencies are looking for a full-proof deal, which gives accountability and guarantees, coupled with maximum returns and minimum risks. In light of this, PVR has introduced the ‘Pay per eyeball’ plan for its advertisers which helps decide the success of a campaign.

“There was a time last year when some advertisers came to us and asked that how we would insulate them from the success and failure of a certain film and that is where we came up with this ‘pay per eyeball’ concept. In about three months from today, we will launch the eyeball plan in a new avatar wherein we will talk to agencies and advertisers to give us certain revenue per eye ball,” explained Dutta. He added, “We are saying that whether a film works at the box office or not, if we have promised to deliver, say, two crore eyeballs, I will only charge you money when we deliver those two crore eyeballs.” The e-tax reports will be furnished to all advertisers as a proof for the number of eye balls in every auditorium and show.

PVR recently bought the multiplex chain Cinemax for Rs 395 crore, making it the largest player in the market with control over 351 screens. Commenting on the deal, Dutta said, “In Delhi, we are present almost everywhere but Cinemax was dominating certain markets such as Mumbai as a circuit. We had six cinemas and Cinemax had about close to 13, so after the deal both of us put together dominate the Maharashtra belt.”

On expansion plans, Dutta commented, “We have the depth and the scale to map entire India. We are expanding and we have plans to open 50-60 new screens next year.”

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