I mean the title of this article is basically a rhetorical question. If the government and big corporations have access to our information through phones and laptops, what is stopping companies from marketing their latest products on the periphery of our psyche. Of course the example(s) I will provide are not going to be as sophisticated as all of the above examples but just that most people will probably have not figured that they were basically watching an ad for a movie or a web-series.
There were the obvious ‘behind-the-scene’ teasers, where we get a video of the actors working in front of cameras, with their looks and movie sets creating hype. After the movie releases, we get a more in-depth interview with the actors and the director on set talking about the movie and their experiences while working with each other. Most of it is hype with good editors working on the video to give the message behind the video a fresh feel. This is more or less obvious.
But now, post Covid-19, content makers have started a new marketing strategy – getting actors to talk with each other on video chat with a live chat/audience watching. Indian content like ‘The Indian Matchmaking’ and ‘Gunjan Saxena: The Kargil Girl’ are two of the very large number of projects that got interviewed in this way. Obviously people are safer with interviews being done at home, but even popular shows like ‘The Office’ and ‘Friends’ are doing video-interviews with each other to create hype for their re-releases (which a lot of us don’t notice). Way more subtle.
The thing is when actors and directors come online for these interviews, they are not as dressed up as they would be for the big interviews (like talk shows or premieres). They are in ‘civilian garb’, making them more relatable and it even makes us want to hear from them more. This is excellent marketing strategy and whoever thought of this, is a certified genius, even if it was due to these troubling times.