Late last year (okay, it was 2014) Bharat & I participated in Bizdroid; a Google and Nasscomm hackathon event. The agenda; to partner up with one of Google’s business partners and help them design and develop an android app; the resulting outcome being a tool that addresses the business requirement of needing one in the first place. There were a bunch of businesses at the event, but we were keen to partner with Yash Raj Films who were also there at the Google office — the event venue.
The problem statement
WHO →
Yash Raj Films (YRF) is an Indian entertainment company established by Yash Chopra, an Indian film director and producer who was considered an entertainment mogul in India.[1] His son Aditya Chopra also produces films under this banner. (From: Wiki)
WHAT →
YRF obviously has a plethora of content. Their goal was simple: to make an app to monetise their content.
HOW →
We wanted to know what other revenue streams they had other than generating money from the box-office returns, so we could try to rope them in, on the app front. We gathered, the revenue streams could be broken down in relation to the time of the movie release, viz.
● Before movie: sponsors, product placement, merchandising, tie-ups
● During movie: ticket sales, cinema tie-ups, merchandising
● After movie: DVD sales, merchandising, TV / streaming rights
How we went about finding a solution came from the above finding. What kept coming up was the revenue they were keen on making from merchandising. Their market study and a bit of common understanding led us to believe that the sales of merchandises were the most, when people went to the cinema to watch a movie. We wanted to build our about around that finding.
The solution:
We proposed that the likelihood of a user installing a specific brand app (in any business) is far less than that of a brand category, for eg. I’d much rather install a beverages app over, say, a Coca-Cola app. So we proposed that instead of building a YRF app, build a cinema/movie app.
The idea:
The idea was essentially foursquare for movies. Yes, like Miso (RIP), but better. We wanted to create an app where you can book a movie, check-in to a movie and earn rewards that you can redeem while watching the movie in a cinema. When you check-in, the app knows the location and show timing and the movie you are watching. The app is completely disabled when you are watching the movie — to comply with the ethics of not using your phone in a cinema. But right when the movie has an interval, it pops the app open, allows you to take a quiz related to the movie, earn rewards and redeem them for merchandise after the movie is over. The engagement time for the app is limited, which makes the rate of it rather high.
Other entertainment companies could want their promo material and merchandises also on the app, which makes the app a thriving community for movie goers and as end result drives enormous engagement and profits to the YRF brand.
The result:
We didn’t win the hacathon. We did get an honorary mention for our efforts. Yay!
