Fun Cinema, the cinema exhibition arm of Essel Group, has a pan India footprint covering 81 screens across 19 cities. The cinema chain has 10% market-share and plans to add three more properties soon, saying it is “cautiously optimistic” when it comes to expansion. With aggressive competition, both from single screens and multiplexes, Shirish Handa, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Business Development, E-City Ventures, talks to Simran Sabherwal about the efficacy of Print and why it forms such an integral part of the advertising mix, particularly when it comes to targeting Tier II and Tier III towns
Q] Fun Cinema is on an expansion spree. What is your strategy when you enter a new town?
It is important for us to reach the masses. We need a mix of media with the widest reach. From that standpoint, Print becomes important because it tends to reach the maximum number of people. So does Television, which reaches a wide audience, but we can’t afford it considering there is so much spillage and wastage on Television. About 70-75% of our budget goes into Print and the rest gets split between the rest of the media.
Q] Can you tell us about your recent launches?
Our most recent launches have been in Khanna (Punjab) and Ghaziabad. Since we have been conservative about new property roll-outs, all our properties are important for us. We don’t have poor performing cinemas. Small markets are important but we have to be selective since they can take only one or two players before everyone starts bleeding. So we will continue to be cautious and look for virgin pockets rather than crowded ones.
Q] How are you dealing with competition in these towns?
We are never the ones to drop prices sharply to remain competitive. We only do that when competition forces us to. It destroys value for the industry. We’d rather provide greater value. We do that through better service and through Fun Rewards – one of India’s largest cinema loyalty programmes.
Q] So how do you reach out to the people in a particular city you enter?
Print makes the cut because it reaches the widest audience in a city. Traditionally most major publications have special rates for entertainment. So by extension, it’s not just film producers, distributors, theatres but also multiplexes and cinema halls which are extended these preferential rates. Entertainment forms an integral part of our life and it becomes the duty of the publication to convey this information, the show timings and where it is run, to the consumer and so publications subsidize people like us. This rate differs from city to city, publication to publication, edition to edition and can be as low as one-eighth of the normal display rate. However, there are some small towns in the North where we don’t get this benefit.
We also use Radio tactically when we have a price promotion on or when we have special content playing which needs to be publicized over and above the conventional medium. Whenever we launch a new property in a city, it becomes important to cover it in Print and then support it with Out-of-Home and Radio. We have a presence on social media but it is not very big and we regularly interact with our customers on the digital platform.
Q] What strategy do you employ when using Print media, considering it is the most important media vehicle for you?
There are two kinds of advertising that happen in Print. The first is funded and led by the distributor of the film and the onus is on him to get footfalls into the cinema halls. This is particularly true in the metros. But, the moment you move away from the heart of Bollywood to a city like Bhopal, Jaipur (and even Delhi), the distributor ads keep dropping. In this case, the multiplexes take it upon themselves to promote their offerings. That’s not to say that distributors are absent from small towns but they do not advertise to the extent that they do in Mumbai, hence we need to be more focussed on Tier II towns. A multiplex almost never promotes a movie, we always promote the destination.
Our price drop communication through Print works because everybody likes a good deal. You can immediately tell the efficacy of Print as a medium when you see the result. Our promotional More Fun Less Price campaign in a few cities, currently on in Lucknow, has received a good response.
Our businesses are scattered. Our media plan is a function of how many properties we have and we have a greater presence in the North. But, in our business I have to work backwards from the reality of that one micro market. Hence, if it is important for me to choose a publication in one city, it doesn’t mean I will get into a multi-edition deal with the same publication in other places. Even if it means that I will have to pay a higher rate for one city, I will still do that as it makes better sense for me than to try and get a lower rate with a multi-city deal. I will always work backward from the top publication choice in that market.
Q] Does your marketing strategy differ in the Hindi heartland when compared to what you do in Metros and other regions?
There is a difference sometimes from metro to non-metro from the point of visibility. I don’t need to tom-tom the visibility of a title in a big city, but sometimes in a smaller city, I need to do that because it doesn’t happen from the distributor’s side. With deep Television penetration, you can cover everyone across the country when the star cast visits popular reality shows. But the movie, especially the smaller ones, may need support in smaller markets. Our ads have images of the movie and in small towns they are important as you don’t have many hoardings and the clutter levels are very low.
