Historically, movie marketing in India has been led by trailers, songs, and interviews of actors. Despite deep penetration of digital in India, traditional movie marketing tactics take away the maximum share of budgets, leaving negligible budget for promotions on digital. With a shoestring budget, we chose a medium that is free, heavily used by movie fanatics, and contemporary –Torrent Index Websites. We created a campaign for a free media platform and made it compelling enough for other traditional and expensive media platforms to follow.

We crafted a film with real actors from the movie who could deceive our audience.

Situation

Illegal Torrent downloaders cost the Indian Film Industry billions of Dollars in lost revenue, each year. URI: The Surgical Strike – a film on the verge of its release, was dreading a similar fate.

Brief:

Effectively promote a movie based on the Indian Army’s covert operation.

Objectives:

To sensitize the audience about the issue of piracy, increase the popularity of the film and drive footfalls to movie theatres.

To promote a movie based on a real covert operation carried out by the military, we devised a new covert strike to bring forth the issue of online piracy onto the national dais.

We scripted a fake film using the lead actors of the actual movie – Vicky Kaushal and Yami Gautam, wherein they broke the 4th wall and trolled those who downloaded the film thinking it was a leaked copy of the movie.

Subsequently, we uploaded our film on multiple torrent websites in the guise of it being a leaked copy of the actual movie.

The first few seconds of the film was made in such a way that illegal downloaders couldn't decipher our intention and eventually fell into the trap.

Target Audience:

Illegal Torrent Downloaders

Data Gathering & Approach:

After an extensive qualitative research – in the form of personalised interviews; and quantitative research - in the form of online surveys conducted on illegal torrent downloaders, it was found that most of these individuals didn’t necessarily think that what they were doing was illegal.

Furthermore, it was discovered that the anonymity that these torrent downloaders celebrate on these websites, make them feel devoid of any real-life connection or consequence, through their actions; i.e. committing online piracy.

Therefore, our communication needed a way to speak to them in a way where it seemed personal, and in a way that wasn’t preachy.

CTA:

Stop illegally downloading movies and watch them in a movie theatre.

Soon after the fake movie was uploaded, several Torrent users were used to downloading, seed (upload) and make it popular in the Torrent universe. Simultaneously, social media was used to propagate the news of the movie’s leak. Cat-C Influencers were used to spread the news.

The social media reach of the movie’s actors was used to extend the reach of the campaign.

The word reached the masses, a national conversation started. Press, film journalists and various social media influencers picked up the story.

As the tone and the execution of the message was quirky, several content publishers and YouTube content creators made content on it.

Within 7 days, the news spread like wildfire and reached the Indian Prime Minister. He addressed the issue and promised a rapid and effective change. His keynote speech garnered us more media reach.

Business Impact – Opening week collection 15 million Dollars

Earned Media worth over 1.5 million dollars.

Response Rate – One in every 150 Indian Torrent users downloaded

20,000 downloads in one day per website

Above 250k Torrent downloads overall

Prime Minister of India spoke about it

Change in Behaviour – People feared to download torrents.

People watching movies in theatres.