The Social Media Story of 2 States

Promoting brands through celebrities and movies is not a new phenomenon and a lot of brands have been doing it across the globe, be it a subtle product placement in the movie, or marketing activities around the movie featuring celebrities. This may include special advertisements, on ground activations, campaigns or even limited edition products etc. Marketers are finding constantly looking for newer ways to co-promote their brands and social media has emerged as a newer and more engaging channels.

A case in point here is the movie 2 States, based on Chetan Bhagat’s bestselling novel by the same name. It had brands like Yes Bank and Sunsilk all too conspicuously placed in the movie.

2 States saw an unprecedented level of promotional activity on social media by its cast as well as the author himself, which succeeded in driving pre-release conversations by the audience. It was pretty evident that the movie would be a hit on the box office, as also depicted in a previous blog on Social Media Movie review for 2 States.

Given the social media state of 2States (read happy state), a lot of brands tried to ride the wave and co-promote themselves with the movie on social media chiefly through Twitter. Brands like Garnier, Maybelline, and Mad Over Donuts ran competitions with innovative hashtags and got their audiences talking. Maybelline (#2StatesWithMNY) and Garnier (#LoveMeinRage) not just promoted the movie, but ran contests around Alia Bhatt who is their brand ambassador as well.

Mad Over Donuts (#MOD2StatesDonut) launched a special donut for the movie.

We analyzed the conversations around these brands and the following infographic shows the interesting insights we observed.

Garnier, Maybelline and MOD were able to drive a lot of mentions on Twitter and their hashtags even trended in some cities, and an interesting gender split was also observed with Maybelline gathering maximum mentions.

Sunsilk and Yes Bank hardly got any mentions in the lead up to the movie, and even after the release there were not too many conversations around them.

A clear observation that the brands were able to drive more conversations because of their contests and innovative hashtags whereas product placement did not result in many mentions in the social media.