- This case study decodes how
TheSmallBigIdea , social media and digital agency, built around awareness around surrogacy and engagement campaign for Mimi. - The agency adopted a 360-degree marketing approach for the movie, leveraging Kriti Sanon and Pankaj Tripathi’s fan base.
- The movie was released four days before the due date, which took the audience by surprise and generated organic chatter on social media.
Adapted from the acclaimed Marathi film ‘Mala Aai Vhhaychy!’ by Samruoddhi Porey, Mimi is directed by Laxman Utekar and produced by Dinesh Vijan. It is also released on Jio Cinemas and Netflix.
The film seamlessly oscillates between drama and comedy with Kriti Sanon in the titular role, Pankaj Tripathi, Supriya Pathak, amongst others.
As Mimi navigates through the uncertain path of motherhood through surrogacy in the film, let us take a deeper look into its marketing strategy ideated and executed by social media and digital marketing agency, TheSmallBigIdea.
Even before the release of assets, there was a lot of speculation around what genre the movie belonged to. Therefore to build curiosity, the overarching theme of the campaign leading to the movie was #NothingLikeWhatYoureExpecting.
Building Curiosity: Announcement Poster
The marketing of the film started with an announcement motion poster that was launched on July 08, 2021. Attempting to establish the movie theme as ‘something unexpected and extraordinary’, the movie was announced with a question mark hiding Kriti Sanon’s baby bump to keep the audience intrigued.
This was followed by 5 more posters in the next 4 days which highlighted every aspect and extended the desired communication, for e.g. the poster established how Mimi is a happy film that will make you cry and due to an unexpected offer, her life will change forever.
Trailer launch:
The trailer was launched digitally, which received an amazing response from the critics and garnered 24 million views within 24 hours across the platforms.
Post-trailer content:
Live Interaction: Kriti Sanon and Pankaj Tripathi
Post the launch of the trailer, Kriti Sanon and Pankaj Tripathi went live on Instagram, which was further joined by Sai Tamhankar to discuss their experience of working in the movie and the love they received after giving a glimpse of Mimi to the world.
Later, TheSmallBigIdea initiated a challenge for the users to recreate the best dialogues from the trailer by using #MimiDialogues.
Behind-The-Scenes And Engagement
To showcase the transformation of Mimi along with the crazy family, the star cast shared behind-the-scenes of crucial moments from the film and its making. The team released a video that captured the transformation of Kriti to Mimi and reflected her special journey in this movie.
In a bid to tickle the funny bones while leveraging the eminent expressions of Pankaj Tripathi, the makers also released ‘Bhanu Reactions’ from the movie. Few promo dialogues and Bhanu’s expressions grabbed attention after the trailer release and therefore the team built content and leveraged topical formats too.
Song releases:
Leveraging the popularity of song releases and contests that follow, Mimi’s marketing strategy involved song challenges for audience engagement and mass reach. Composed by A.R Rahman, the movie has released song numbers such as Param Sundari, Rihaayi De, and more which were weaved in the social media communication.
ParamSundari
ParamSundari was the first and the most important song composed by AR Rahman and sung by Shreya Ghoshal, which was enough to attract the audience. It was a catchy number so the team first teased the audience by uploading the teaser a day prior.
After the release, AR Rahman went live with Mimi’s lead cast and TheSmallBigIdea initiated a #ParamSundariChallenge for which Kriti Sanon demonstrated the hook step to the audience and challenged them to dance with her on this number.
The best performers were also featured on the makers’ and actors’ Instagram pages.
#ParamSundariChallenge took over and was caught on, not only by the users but also by social media influencers. Audiences tried to showcase their talent in their own ways. Not just the dancers but many make-up artists jumped on the bandwagon and presented other artistic videos using the upbeats of this song.
Rihaayi De:
Dance and song covers are quite prevalent and liked by music enthusiasts. With ‘Rihaayi De’ song release, Mimi urged people to hit the right notes with the cover versions of this song. The team encouraged the audience to make #RihaayiDe covers in their own versions.
Movie Release:
The date announced for the movie release was 30th July but riding on the proposition of the movie i.e- Nothing Like What You’re Expecting, we released the movie 4 days prior, i.e-26th July, taking the audience by surprise that successfully garnered the desired attention.
The sudden release was also backed up by saying that it was Kriti Sanon’s (Mimi’s) birthday on 27th, hence the audience and Mimi, both were to receive a gift from the team, which was the early release of the movie.
Her birthday was celebrated in the presence of the media, where the team not only watched but also released the movie. To announce the same, Kriti went live with Pankaj Tripathi, Laxman Utekar and Dinesh Vijan.
Post-Release:
Audience started sharing positive and emotional reviews along with sharing Instagram stories of watching Mimi on their Television sets with their Family.
To amplify the audience’s mood and involvement with the movie, new campaign hashtag was adopted #WatchMimiWithFamily.
Song Releases Continue:
Rest of the songs, Yaane-Yaane, Hututu and Phuljhadiyon, were released after the movie launch.
BTS Videos:
The agency had specific BTS videos based on Mimi’s lead characters, the bond that the family shared off screen and how working with kids had impacted the sets and people working there.
Content Marketing:
To keep the buzz alive, Mimi roped in influencers such as Ashish Chanchlani, amongst others for outreach and engagement. This involved leveraging relatable and humorous moments from the movie, acting challenges, interacting with the stars, and highlighting surrogacy as the subject.
It was further promoted through a brand partnership with Mammy Poko Pants.
With a minimalistic approach, Mimi leveraged the latest social media tools and features to reach out to more viewers.
Results
- 140K reels generated on Instagram alone.
- Param Sundari Dance Challenge on YouTube received around 5 Million+ Views.
- Overall, the Param Sundari Challenge received around 150K entries across platforms and those entries received approx. 150 Million+ views across platforms.
- Assets for the Param Sundari Challenge posted on the page, by the talent, Sony Music, Jio Cinema and Jio Studios garnered approx. 5 Million views and received impression of approx. 15 Million users.
We received around 600 video entries from the audience, which garnered around 10K views in total including the videos made with original music and videos made by individual users as cover for the song.
The movie campaign on Facebook registered 3.5 Million Minutes worth of views for video content on Maddock Film's page alone. The page's record stood at 39K Minutes in the months prior to the beginning of the movie campaign. The videos in the campaign received 160K in engagement metrics on Facebook which was a rise of 7000% in raw engagement. Through the 28 days campaign period, the campaign's content reached 17.7 Million users which was a 8900% increase than previous months and the page gained 11.8 K followers which was a 78787% increase than before the campaign begun.
On Instagram, the campaign on Maddock's page alone saw 3.9 Million in total impressions and an average of 100K in reach per day through 28 days period. The page gained 1.8K followers during the run of the campaign.
On Twitter, the campaign received 1.87 Million unique impressions, profile visits increased by 450% to 35.6K and the page gained 17.3K new followers within the 28 days campaign period.
"Maddock always puts faith in out of the box stories, and in the end, marketing is also about storytelling. We are proud that our inventive marketing approach contributed to make Mimi the success that is,” said Dinesh Vijan.
“Movies like Mimi are a marketer’s delight. You get to build stories around cinema which needs no pretense or smoke and mirrors. The team had a great time playing with the humor on one hand and something as intense as surrogacy on the other. We created some fun content with the talented cast, which was an instant hit with the audience. All in all, it’s an honest film with a fun marketing narrative,” said Harikrishnan Pillai, CEO and co-founder, TheSmallBigIdea.