IndiaSocial Case Challenge – edition 2

Category: Best Short Term Campaign

Winner of Position #2

Title: Fans don’t just “like” us, they LOVE us too!

Share a little about your organisation

BookMyShow.com was Bigtree Entertainment’s venture into the world of e-commerce. It started out as a platform to sell movie tickets to that “elite” set of customers who were movie buffs and tech-savvy enough to understand how the internet worked. It has since expanded in its operations and now is the hub for all your movie, play, concert and even sport ticketing needs. With offices in India, New Zealand and Malaysia, we have a wide array of entertainment needs catered to the end-consumer in various forms viz. our website, our iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and J2ME applications, our mobile WAP site and the in-house call-centre.

It’s been less than four years since BookMyShow came out in 2007 and it already boasts 40% CAGR in revenues and holds over 90% market share in the online entertainment ticketing space.

With a listing of over 1000 screens across 87 cities around the country, we have partnerships with all major Indian production houses as well as the Indian counterparts of some which are based abroad. Our partnerships also extend to cinema chains which include INOX, BIG Cinemas, CineMAX and Fun to name a few. 75% of all cinema tickets sold online are via BookMyShow with peak sales which have touched the mark of over a million tickets.

BookMyShow has already sold tickets for over 1500 plays online and we have exclusive tie-ups with theatres viz. Prithvi Theatre and the NCPA (Mumbai), Indian Habitat Centre (Delhi) and Rangshankara (Bangalore). In addition to plays, we have also been ticketing partners for concerts and sport events, too.

BookMyShow was the official ticketing partner for Mumbai Indians, Kings XI Punjab, and Rajasthan Royals and was the official online ticketing partner for Delhi Daredevils for the latest season of IPL in 2011. We improved on the customer experience by providing an intuitive way to book tickets online and allowed easier accessibility by tie-ups with Café Coffee Day, Reliance Fresh and Reebok to allow sale of tickets in their outlets. We were also the official ticketing agency for the prestigious Yonex – Sunrise Badminton Asia Tournament, hosted in the capital for the first time in April.

PreBook is our distinctive method of allowing our customers to book for tickets for their favourite movie well in advance so that they can be the chosen few who get to see it “first-day-first-show.”

Executive Summary

BookMyShow, as a web-based product, needed to be propagated more fully to the internet savvy customers that we had. The customer care number that we have was proving to be insufficient for answering the general customer complaints. Having a social media campaign seemed to be the best solution and we hit it head-on. “The Social Network” has helped us in bridging the gap that the customers had with BookMyShow and gave them a personal experience for every problem that they faced. We also decided that our customers got the benefits of being loyal to us and organizing contests to reward them free tickets, merchandise and free previews seemed like the best thing.

Nature of the programme/ activity/ campaign

Business to Consumer

Duration of the said programme/ activity/ campaign. Start date-end date

We were on Facebook as early as August 2007 but it wasn’t until Nov 2010 that we decided that our approach needed a strategic change and we started seriously focusing on our Facebook campaigns. 1Nov 2010 – 15th June 2011 marks months during which we ran several campaigns to supplement our new strategy – improving visibility and reaching out to our potential consumers

Background

All our customers are internet savvy as our product itself is web-based. Considering this, we found it imperative that the best way to get to our customers would be by use of something that would be web-based. Our earlier efforts to increase our customer base had primarily been advertising campaigns during key events. We felt the need to give our customers a better experience and solving their doubts, queries, and grievances in a more effective manner. What we most required was a platform which would allow all of this and also let us put our points forward and allow us to reach more people. That was the research that went behind tackling the problem at hand.

Objectives

Our current objective is to maximize our visibility via consumer connect amongst internet users in India by using our Facebook Fanpage. Our ultimate goal still remains to boost sale of tickets for all our events and offerings.

Strategy and Planning

First Impressions

We believe in the book ‘Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind’ when it says, “The easy way to get into a person’s mind is to be first.” We strive to have the freshest content by actively tying up with major production houses (both Hollywood & Bollywood). We try to give our fans the “first glimpse” of what’s coming up with exclusive trailers and photos. (E.g: We were the first to break the ICE AGE 3 trailer in India (before all media including TV & other internet portals & channels).

Taking It Forward

The fastest way of communicating anything has always been word-of-mouth. Amplification probability is always high and by giving away free stuff there is always a high chance of each winner telling their friends, relatives and/or colleagues about it giving us a wider base to sell our product.For Shaitan, our fans won a pre-screening by just calling in our customer care on a first-cum-first-serve basis. Happy fans who loved the movie wrote their own verdict on our Fan page. Over a 100 Shaitan shirts were given on Facebook  & 50 on Twitter (via contest, successful as followers retweeted #Shaitan& we enabled it to trend that day Free tickets for pre-screenings and movie merchandise created great buzz around the movie. It’s of course a great gratification & earns brownie points for super loyalty amongst our fans.

Bob the Mascot

We had to change to be very interactive, young & fun. We realized that our target audience (users & potential users of BookMyShow.com) were all on Facebook& primarily were the youth.

Enter our new Mascot, Bob, theRockstar who’d be a friend to all our fans.

• Someone with whom they could relate to, talk to, express their thoughts, fantasies, likes, loves & stuff they hated.
• Someone who would listen and answer their queries (including those that could not be addressed by our customer care call center, helpdesk@bookmyshow.com).
• Someone who would tell them what to watch out for and what were the hottest deals & offers on our site.

From our logo we transitioned into our glares donning cool Mascot, Bob (Oct 2010). Bob is the ultimate entertainment central from movies, plays, events, concerts to sports (IPL, F1), he has the lowdown of all the latest buzz and gossip.

Our main aim in creating Bob was tomake our Fan page friendly, informal & interactivefor all our fans. While we haven’t officially announced Bob’s name yet, Bob’s trendy. From living in the Christmas spirit to supporting India for the World Cup (and even Valentine’s Day), he’s donned various avatars over the last 6 months to keep his fans updated with what’s hot. (Through the World Cup when we had Bobmention when the next match was and who it was against. Refer ppt for Bob’s Many Avatars).

Gaining maximum visibility via consumer connectwas the prime idea. Instead of major spends on traditional advertising media (TV/ radio etc.) we opted for a cost-effective way to create our brand image via Bob and directly connect with our consumers.

Exclusives Up for Grabs

We have kept our fans engaged via exclusive fresh first looks of movies& movie content, exciting contests, quizzes, movie merchandise freebies and tickets to be won. We started approaching &associating with major production houses (Hollywood & Bollywood) for content, merchandise and tickets (and later even FB Apps & cross promos for publicizing their Fan Pages). It is a cost effective win-win for both where our fans are happy and the films get great visibility and promotion. We have done the same for events, plays, concerts & sporting events as well.

Today we’re not just a Fan Page. We’ve transitioned into open forum community where our fans come and express themselves.

Beta Testing

Our Beta Android app was up for grabs to a chosen few for testing purposes. We wanted feedback from the end users about flaws and also why the app was good. All it took was one small post on our fan page and we had over a hundred who wanted a taste of it. This kind of response worked a lot better than having to market the app in any other manner.

Your “TicketBuddy”

We have an integrated FB application named TicketBuddy which allows users to book tickets without leaving their social hub. TicketBuddy allows you to book movie tickets in the same fashion as on the website. The PreBook functionality on TicketBuddy is, however, innovative. It allows you to “Make Your Friends Pay” by reserving seats for you and your friends but just paying for your tickets and making your friends pay for theirs by links that are posted on their wall. If the PreBook-ing gets confirmed, you and your friends will all be seated together.

Chatting up with the Community

Our fans interact with us as well as other fans through our fan page. This creates a broad community of people who share a common interest whether it may be movies, plays, concerts, sports, actors, actresses, the latest gossip – just about anything! What’s more via facebook mentions (@tags) we have started promoting other Fan page communities to our fans & vice-versa is also applicable as is in the case of Y-films, Mumbai Indians & Delhi Daredevils official Fan Pages that use us in their mentions to talk to our fan community regularly.

Stakeholders

Since our main aim is always to please our consumers and get them to interact effectively with the elements on the web, our main stakeholders are our customers. What keeps them happy makes us happy.

However, our social strategy has also been aimed to help us get more tie-ups with the production houses and using our demographics to help them understand how our fan page can get them more exposure too. This has worked both ways and we can usually brag about having “first-look” promos – photos and/or videos and/or merchandise – that heightens the customer experience.

Our investors, Network 18 is one of India’s leading full play media conglomerates with interests in television, print, internet, filmed entertainment, mobile content and allied businesses.

Our partners include major cinema chains including BIG Cinemas, CineMAX, INOX, Fun Cinemas, DT Cinemas, SRS Cinemas, Prasads, Wave Cinemas, M2K Cinemas, Movietime Multiplex, Era Cinemas, Spice Cinemas, Fame, Chanakya and Urvashi.

Choice of channel/s

Facebook – Why?

Customer Connect

Facebook, as a social media platform in India, has picked up its pace over the last few years. A large and growing portion of some of the most valuable demographics is spending more of their time and attention on Facebook and less on other channels and media. The reach of it extends to not only the teenage crowd but has been helpful for all enterprises and businesses too. The large user base of Facebook is an added advantage and we aimed to utilize it in the best possible manner.

Addressing Grievances of Customers

The engagement that Facebook provides also allows us to directly interact with our potential customers and provide help or support to the existing consumers. Addressing grievances and resolving customer queries in a short period of time by means of our fan page have allowed us to create a brand presence in an expedient and cost-effective way.

Low Cost – High Visibility

The output required to maintain the fan page is negligible and we still manage to get a loyal and active following.

Our reach is across channels like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Bookmyshow Blog. But our major platform that is used the best is Facebook.

1. Facebook Fan Page – The fan page is a more current informative platform where our posts include latest movie trailers and event updates, periodically spiced with quiz questions, movie merchandise, premier and free screening of movies and celeb Meet & Greets.
2. Blog – The blog features the latest movie reviews from BMS reviewers as well as reknowned critic Rajeev Masand, a B-town Buzz section with the latest pics from the latest Bollywood events & parties, polls, offers and discounts and miscellaneous articles about our activities, tie-ups, products, etc.
3. Twitter – Entertaining while interacting is our aim here. We tweet music, trivia, quizzes, polls and latest movie news. We are proud to have recently added cricket to our agenda.
4. Youtube – This is where we upload our latest trailers & some exclusive ones which are provided to us before any other media or channel.

Implementation

We’re a small team and all our work is in-house and we do not have any external agencies assisting us on our Fan page.

Team Member	Work	Duration
RaashiMalhotra	Creating content & contests for posts.	Part-time employee from May 2010 to Mar 2011
AvneetGhai	Main strategy incharge, creating content & contests for posts, tie-ups with brands & production houses.	Oct 2010 – present
Firdous	Arranging & managing contest winners & fan queries via email & on Fanpage.	Intern Mar 2011 – June 2011
Rakesh Nair	Developer helps in uploading new apps & creation of Ticket Buddy.	Inception – present

 

We partner with external agencies for freebies for our fans & in exchange we promote them.

• Production houses – provide content, merchandise & tickets
• Organizers or plays, events & concerts – provide content, merchandise & tickets
• Sporting events – cost borne by us (tickets).
• Brands – prize sponsors for contests

Impact and Outcome

Our fan base grown from 12,000 fans in Nov to 3,46,277 fans as of today. They’re a very active bunch too.

Daily, Weekly & Monthly user activities have also shown rapid growth spurts, indicating that we try our best to keep our fans engaged & they love the open forum we offer them.

In the last 6 months we’ve experienced rapid growth (385% to be precise from 15 Dec 2010 – 15 Jun 2010).

From Nov 1 2010 to Jun 15 2011->

• Daily Active Users: 2,983 to 53,354
• Weekly Active Users: 7,098 to 1,22,651
• Monthly Active Users: 9,336 to 2,00,491

Growth Percentage: 3,264%

• New Likes: 340,475
• Lifetime likes: 335,359

Fan Interaction & Activity

People don’t just “like” us and forget. They regularly visit our page (daily post views >> no. of fans) & post their feedback (interact) as well.

Time frame: From Nov 1 2010 to Jun 15 2011

• Post Views: 35,405,900 ; Growth: 1,093% (compared to 19 Mar 2010 – 31 Oct 2010)
• Post Feedback: 117,206;  Growth: 2,043 % (compared to 19 Mar 2010 – 31 Oct 2010)

Interactions – Daily Story Feedback

Stories on our wall that received the maximum Feedback.

Learnings

The entire experience has been the most immersive and eye-opening one that we have had so far. It has helped us a lot in understanding customer trends, what they like and dislike in general, the most common customer complaints and how much people love freebies too!

Taking the entire initiative forward also helped us to help our customers better. We were very attentive to their demands and complaints. We took the time to try to be as personal as we could to each fan that we have. We also constantly innovated and changed strategies to make sure that it was fresh stuff that was delivered with their morning coffee.

Contests improved the feedback from our fans manifold and we were able to have people who were gratified and soon we had responses which almost every time whistled to the same tune of “BookMyShow, I Love You and thanks for the tickets/merchandise.”

It was also good to know that no good deed goes unrewarded. Since the time we started taking more interest in our customers they have also rewarded us in their own manner with much more patience and an increased activity to the posts that we put up.

What next

It is too hard to pin point a certain step that we will be taking for the future. Facebook is a very large community to handle. With over 300,000 fans and counting, we think having a separate “Customer Grievance Cell” right here on Facebook would be taking the right step forward. We would aim to make it the one-stop point of contact for anything BookMyShow. Another idea is to start webinars or Live Chats with celebrities for our movie-buffs.

Testimonials

Jacinto Fernandes, Head Marketing, Paramount Films of India Ltd. –

“BookMyShow’sFanpage has helped us tremendously in leveraging our Fanpage (Paramount India). We recognized them as a platform where the Indian masses regularly visit for their daily dose on movie gup-shup. For Kung-Fu Panda 2 we requested them to upload our apps to direct their fans to our pages and this helped us raise our number of fans. It was a win-win situation for both of us, 12% of our ticket sales come from BookMyShow.”

Anjali Malhotra, PR & Promotions Manager, SPEFilms India Pvt Ltd (Sony Pictures India)-

“It was great working with BMS because they engage an audience that loves a wide variety of movies which is what we bring to the table.”

Suitable Tittle

BookMyShow Fan Page – The Secret to whyFans don’t just “like” us, theyLOVEus too!

Fact Sheet

Name of the Company: BookMyShow.com

Category: Internet/ IT/ ITES, Business to Consumer

Case Submitted By: Avneet Kaur Ghai

Website: http://in.bookmyshow.com/