#ExpectTheUnexpected goes the tag line of the latest YRF offering – Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! And with the digital campaign of their latest – Yash Raj Films reaffirms their status as the trend setters in the digital arena. Always being amongst the foremost to embrace the latest technology and use it innovatively to create a digital stir, this production house came up with an interesting digital campaign for Detective Byomkesh Bakshy.
Key innovations of their digital media campaign included:
1) Skype: Using the Skype web and mobile platform, Detective Byomakesh Bakshy! was the first Bollywood film to realize and leverage the immense reach of this platform by advertising on it.
2) Video Captchas: Till date, Captchas have been traditionally been used in the computing world to differentiate whether or not the user is human. Advertising on Captcha’s was an unheard of thing for a Bollywood film – that is until Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! came into the picture. Using the highly engaging video capthcha units on both the web and mobile, a special cut of the film’s promos were played as a captcha and the user had to enter the text based on the content of the film to verify themselves, this was a breakthrough concept in the digital space.
3) HTML5 Countdown Banners on Google Display Network: Special countdown banners heralding the arrival of the film were created and a campaign was initiated on Google Display Network. With this activity, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is possibly the first Bollywood film to have done an HTML5 campaign on Google Display Network. The banners ran across popular websites,mobile apps and devices. The response to this activity was phenomenal generating a CTR of over 3 % which is fairly unheard of in the digital world and indicates the high engagement level of the users with the film content.
4) M-Canvas: The film was the first to do a special mobile campaign with an ad unit called M-Canvas.
M-Canvas consists of 2 elements – Initiator and Impactor. The ‘Initiator’ is a thumb-sized overlay, which appears at the bottom left corner of web pages. Engagement with the initiator brings up the Impactor, a full screen ad, which is designed to deliver a cohesive story telling experience. The initiator consisted of a special creative and worked as a prelude for a user to engage with the film’s message.The full screen Impactor showcased a trailer of the film.
5) WAP Video Page Push: Keeping in mind the exponential growth of mobile consumption in India, the film did a special WAP video page push activity across select WAP sites, wherein the WAP page pushed down with a special video unit of the film playing.
Mr. Alnoor Merchant (Director, Epigram Digital) – the digital agency which handled the digital campaign for the film feels “The beauty of the ever changing technology and digital scape is that various diverse and engaging platforms are emerging. Since each film is unique, we keep in mind the film content and positioning and thereby work out the digital campaign strategy so that the communication reaches out to the core target audience. For us it’s always been about innovating, experimenting and maximizing the efficacy with each new digital campaign.”
Just like the zara hatke feel of the film’s trailers and promos, the digital campaign for Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! has been anything but the expected.
