MUMBAI: Multi Screen Media’s English movie channel - Sony Pix - is leaving no stone unturned to push the envelope in creating engagement with its viewers with clutter breaking on-ground activities.
“We constantly push the envelope in the English movie channel space and that has helped us to keep our viewers engaged with our ‘Stay Amazed’ proposition,” says Sony Pix business head Saurabh Yagnik. “We will continue to do such clutter breaking activities and do our best to continue to cement our position at number two in the space and inch closer to becoming the leader in the space.”
The channel is taking its ‘Pix Premiere Nights’ initiative to a whole new level by providing its viewers a chance to experience the second installment to the Andrew Garfield starrer The Amazing Spiderman a day prior to its 1 May India release.
“The idea is to build the Hollywood audience, and by increasing the consumption along with the familiarity, it builds traction for movies before their theatrical release,” expounds Yagnik.
The channel is expected to be spending anywhere between Rs 2-3 crore to push this initiative. “The scale at which the property - ‘Pix Premiere Nights’ - has grown is really encouraging for us. With Hobbit we had travelled to three cities, it went up to six cities during Robocop where we saw a participation of 8,000 plus viewers and now with The Amazing Spider Man 2 we will be travelling to 10 cities and have 11 screenings with a clear message of 'watch it before India does'. We have already seen nearly 2,500 plus participants with 20 more days to go before the result of the contest is declared,” Yagnik beams.
The 10 cities being targeted are Mumbai, Delhi, Gurgaon, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Chennai. The contest began on 4 April and is being marketed and pushed on social media as well as on the channel and is being sponsored by Snapdeal.com.
“Nowadays if a movie is marketed well, it translates into great box-office numbers and also gets good television viewership when premiered on a channel,” explains Yagnik. “Plans are afoot to really push the property on the channel with innovative programming and trivia, which will soon go on air.”
Pix will be building the buzz for the movie and the contest by running the Spiderman and Iron Man movie franchises among others through ‘Pix Doubles’ along with giving great insights and trivia during the movies with its very own ‘Pixipedia’.
“We will also be showcasing a special ‘Behind the Scenes’ exclusive footage from The Amazing Spider Man 2. The idea is to build salience with the brand ‘Pix’ and create a recall value for our viewers,” reveals Yagnik.
The 2,000 odd contest winners from across the length and breadth of the country will receive calls to invite them for the screening. “If we want to become leaders in the space, and sizably scale up our market share, we need to invest in building our brand and keep coming with such engaging innovations and clutter breaking initiatives,” Yagnik ends.
