The Way Satellite Television promotes BIG Ticket Movies on Television

We have come a long way since the early days of internet when pop-ups were frequently used to peddle advertisements. Then came pop-up blockers which made surfing a pleasant experience and now except for the embedded advertisements (display, text, etc.) or a roadblock on the webpage, consuming internet is not obstructed by such intrusive advertising.

Contrast this with television, for a majority of people who don't have digital cable or personal video recorders or tivo, they have to stand the commercial breaks. But now tolerance towards commercial breaks is ingrained culturally and they are no more perceived as intrusion but instead utilized to answer nature's call, see what other channels have to offer, for homemakers it's an opportune time to progress kitchen chores, if someone likes sleaze, deodorant advertisement will live up to their expectations. Things one can do in a commercial break are just limited by imagination J

For quite some time now a particular English movie channel is promoting an upcoming movie of the decade on their channel, which was released in theatres in the year 2009 as a 3D movie. The movie has strange looking blue characters whose primary mode of transport is oversized combat birds. I was not able to see the movie in theatres and am eagerly looking forward to catch it on television (albeit in non 3D).

The television channel has adopted the established strategies to promote the movie in order to build planned/appointment viewing for this movie of the decade. This includes the normal fare of advertisement spots on their channel, other channels (I assume), print advertisements (I assume) and out of home sites (I assume). I also anticipate contests around the movie and contests during the showing of the movie on television (to retain viewership during commercial breaks).

However one mode of promotion that I particularly felt was obstructive while watching another movie on the same channel was a graphic formation of a bird that flew from the top left of the screen to the bottom center and then settling back to the top left portion of the screen. It’s a great way to grab viewer attention and acts as a reinforcement that the movie of the decade will be shown on so and so date/time, but it breaks the viewer attention from what they are currently seeing. Drawing an analogy to internet advertising, it is akin to a pop up that startles a person from their current on screen activity. Fortunately one can close the popup windows and allow/dis-allow showing of popups on their computer but not this form of advertising on television.

Another form which could have been adopted was the utilization of the bottom panel of the TV screen, but that would hide the sub-titles.

Since the channel must have invested considerable monies to acquire the satellite rights of this sci-fi visual effects treat, it is understandable that they would go all out to promote this movie with a significant amount of advertising and marketing war chest. I am sure there can be other non-startling/non obtrusive forms to reinforce the movie of the decade time slot to the viewers of this channel, such as internet advertising (text + display)/social media/radio spots announcing movie trivia and show date/timings etc.

Usually while signing up for internet mail/social media accounts, the users have an option to upload their Profile/Avatar photo, maybe the channel can tie up with such websites to offer their users an Avatar gallery to choose a profile photo if they don’t want to put up their actual photos. An Avatar for an Avatar….!!

As always, I will request the readers of this post if you have time, please drop a line.