| The channel had adopted an aggressive marketing strategy
for Hollywood Hungama. Advertisements appeared in all mainline
newspapers in Hindi-speaking parts of the country. Then there were
branded vans traveling across India carrying huge hoardings. Tied
in to the outdoor campaign were on air promos on cable TV and on all
channels belonging to the One Alliance bouquet.
 Explaining
the marketing strategy behind Hollywood Hungama, Max vice
president marketing & commercial Tushar Shah says the communication
was shaped in such a way that though exaggerated, it conveys the
core value of the Sony Max tagline Deewana bana de to the
target group. Quoting informal market reports, Shah claims the campaign
is one of the huge hits in recent times.
"Max treats its communication very differently, and the effort
is to reinforce its commitment to viewers. This often gets reflected
in the results in our case. The challenge was to break the language
and culture barriers and at the same time to do justice to our value
proposition of Deewana bana de. "The word Hungama
gives an instant idea about entertainment, jubilation and celebration
to the masses," says Shah.
 The
brief given to Max's media planner MediaCom India for the campaign
was, 'to address an audience interested in Hollywood fare, but comfortable
in Bollywood lingo.' Says MediaCom India president Jasmin Sohrabji,
"Resisting the temptation of a 'high' statistical reach number,
we remained true to the target group we needed to address. With
a clear focus on the vernacular, our lead mediums were outdoor,
print and cable, in addition to our own network channels. While
outdoor and cable generated the build up and interest, vernacular
print and our network channels added 'recency' to this build up
- all culminating into a high 4.1 per cent tune-in!"
 So
we have this village belle from Gujarat in dandia costumes holding
a nanchaku, the guy from Rajastan wearing a Mexican hat and the
Bengali woman wearing a blond wig, scoring big for Max, catching
the fancy of the common man who was obviously the target audience
of Hollywood Hungama.
According to Euro RSGC vice president creative Ashok Karnik, who
handled the creative for Hollywood Hungama, there was nothing
new about the whole idea and even the campaign. But he feels nobody
ever made an effort to market and advertise the innovation in the
way Max did. Karnik explains how the agency went about dealing with
the challenge of wooing the Hindi-watching masses to the world of
Hollywood:
 "The
brief was, 'Hollywood movies are to be shown in Hindi and Sony has
the best titles in its Columbia Tristar library.' The challenge
was to reach out to the masses, who are only familiar with Hindi
movies, and capture their attention. We wanted to make the creative
interesting and appealing. So in our ads, we showed normal people
wearing something which is Hollywood through various visual imageries."
 One
key aspect of Hollywood Hungama's success with its opener
Anaconda is the fact that it was not a world premiere of
the movie. The channel took up a movie that has been shown on various
channels 'n' number of times. So the introductory offer had nothing
much to rave about. Still Max scored it big with this relatively
low profile movie and full marks goes to the effective communication
campaign it pulled off.
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