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Pune Curtain Call: Marketing theatre in the new world, the social media way
“Amar Photo Studio” had enjoyed a wonderful social media marketing campaign. The actors in the play were extremely popular and were a household name because of the TV series they were a part of. The series had ended recently and the actors had decided to work on this play
The play “Amar Photo Studio” was ready to be shown to the world. Its journey from seed to the theatre piece it had transformed into has been witnessed in the articles of the previous weeks.
“Amar Photo Studio” had enjoyed a wonderful social media marketing campaign. It was hailed as one of it’s USPs and I feel fortunate to have witnessed the start of social media trend. The actors in the play were extremely popular and were a household name because of the TV series they were a part of. The series had ended recently and the actors had decided to work on this play.
While they were popular individually, the audience used to love them more as a unit. So, it was very smart of them to continue working together. While we were rehearsing, none of them put up anything about the play on their social media handles. So, the fact that the beloved unit is working on something was kept a secret from the audience, who were looking forward to seeing them again.
Once the date of the opening show was finalised, we decided to start publicity. Traditionally, publicity of Marathi theatre is done through the medium of newspaper. A photoshoot is organised a few weeks before the show. And there are two or three advertising agencies who specialise in designing ads for plays. One of them gets a contract. An ad is put out around a week before the show, usually on the preceding Sunday, announcing that this particular play is coming soon. And then advertisement slots are booked in local dailies for two days before every show.
Generally, as the cost of these advertisements kept rising year on year, it started becoming a burden to the producers. Especially for amateur theatre groups, advertisement cost takes up a massive part of the budget. But it has to be done! For the past few years, we started an experiment for our theatre group – Natak Company. We knew that most of our audience was young and on social media. We had generated a good amount of traffic on our online pages too. Two to three team members, led by Gandhaar Sangoram, started taking an interest in social media marketing. They started designing creative advertisements for social media and made full use of the current social media trends. We also shifted our ticketing online rather than the traditional ticket window. We noticed that most of our shows were getting sold out online and one day we decided to not put out an ad in the newspaper and see if it affects our sale in any way. It didn’t. And that just signalled the arrival of a different time in publicity for us.
In the case of this particular play, almost all actors had a sizeable social media following and we were confident that word about this play will reach the audience once they upload an announcement. But we thought of doing something quirky before starting actual publicity. Since the play has a large element of time travel and revolves around a photo studio, one of the team members suggested putting up a passport size picture of their childhood with the hashtag of “Amar Photo Studio”. Nothing else will be mentioned. Just the picture and the hashtag. Everyone liked the idea and felt that it was a good teaser before the actual advertisement.
It was decided that Amey Wagh will put up the first picture and then all other actors will follow suit in the coming days, which will pique the curiosity of the audience and we will have their attention. Just as Amey was about to upload his childhood passport size picture, I remember that Gandhaar suddenly stopped him. He gave a suggestion to tag three random people in the post, urging them to put up a childhood passport size picture of theirs. We all agreed and Amey posted his picture and tagged three others who had a sizeable social media following with the hashtag of our play. The three friends also put their pictures up graciously, along with the hashtag, and they tagged three of their friends.
By evening, the trend had caught up and everyone was speaking about “Amar Photo Studio”, but no one knew what it was! Everyone we knew wanted to be tagged and wanted to be a part of it. Some who weren’t tagged just put up their pictures anyway! It was featured in the news and it was termed “Amar Photo Studio challenge”.
When we made the actual announcement, the play was already hyped up because of the social media campaign. The fact that these actors were coming together was a bonus! Traditionally, a play usually starts drawing audience after twenty-five to thirty shows and once word spreads about it. We enjoyed an overwhelming response from the first show itself!
Not only was the play a commercial hit, it also laid the foundation of a social media management company for Gandhaar! Whenever I used to visit the theatre, the ticket checkers and other theatre staff used to tell me that they were witnessing a change in the audience demography. Never had they seen young people in such large numbers who have come to watch a play. It felt wonderful to be able to achieve this!
Nipun Dharmadhikari is a storyteller and looks forward to telling them on stage, in front of the camera or in person.
