- Brands in India are using the hype around
Avengers Endgame to leverage their own entities by hosting contests on Twitter and Facebook. - Cinepolis, a multiplex chain in India, is even hosting a Marvel Movie Marathon turning what would be one ticket to one movie into nine tickets.
- Oppo is launching a Avengers themed phone on the same day at the movie’s release in India.
- Other brands are running online contests and retail brands, specifically, are offering up Avengers merchandise.
Even digital wallets were in on the trend. PayTM, a homegrown payments app backed by Alibaba, ran a ‘First Day, First Show’ contest where paying for tickets using the platform could win users two free passes to the first show of Avengers Endgame on the first day of its release.
When bookings opened on April 20, PayTM received over 250,000 requests per minute and sold over 1.5 million tickets making Avengers Endgame the highest advance-grossing movie till date for the platform.
Myntra, Redworlf and the Souled Store — online retail stores in India that sell Marvel merchandise — saw sales increasing a month before the movie was even set to launch in the country. In the week leading up to the release of Avengers Endgame, sales of Avengers merchandise reportedly grew by 20%.
It could have something to do with the Souled Store asking Marvel fans to buy their merchandise before they could be eligible to enter the #WhateverItTakes contest that would win them tickets to the screening of Avengers Endgame.
Cinepolis, a multiplex chain in India, turned what would be one ticket to Avengers Endgame into nine tickets for the Marvel Movie Marathon. The promotional exercise would last over 20 hours ending in the screening of the final installment of the Avengers series.
Even, Oppo, the Chinese smartphone manufacturer, is riding the wave by launching an Avengers themed Oppo F11 Pro with upgraded storage stretching to 128GB on the same day as the release of Avengers Endgame in India.
Brands circling Avengers Endgame
While most brands are also running contests on Twitter and offering coveted tickets a screening of the Avengers finale and others are just piggybacking on the trend to gain more visibility for their brand.
Star Movies India ran a #PopUpTheatreOnStarMovies contest during the week before the release of Avengers Endgame where 100 fans could win tickets to the movie by tuning in for a movie marathon on the channel and answering trivia questions.
Audi India used their partnership with Marvel inviting fans in Delhi to Mumbai to an ‘exclusive’ screening of the movie if they could answer just one question — What is the name the model of Audi Tony Stark drives in the Avengers Endgame?
Others like ComicCon India and 9X Media’s Spotboye were also spotted offering up tickets to Marvel fans.
Rather than offer conventional tickets that normally retail for no more than ₹700, Miniso India offered tickets to an Avengers Endgame screening at PVR Directors Cut where prices reached ₹2400 during the pre-booking surge.
Reliance Trends, on the other hand, didn’t run a contest but used the opportunity to highlight their in-store Avengers collection featuring a fan wearing a Captain Marvel t-shirt.
Peter England India, a clothing brand, went a step further to integrate the Indian Premier League (IPL) — expected to fetch over 300 million viewers on Hotstar — asking fans which Avengers they would pick to represent the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) triad.
The contests represent an interesting trend where they mostly see success on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. They are yet to crack image and video based platforms like Instagram where user engagement is higher — up to 7% where as engagement on Twitter doesn’t go beyond 0.18%.
See also:
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