Advertising in movie halls: From still cards to experiential marketing

While in-cinema advertising is yet to reach pre-pandemic levels, multiplex operators are making the next big leap to lure brands. Will it revive the market?

At a recent event to showcase its new in-cinema advertising platform, multiplex chain PVR drew attention to a commercial for car-maker Maruti Suzuki. This wasn't a conventional ad projected on a giant screen in front of viewers. Instead, it used the walls of the cinema hall to show the car driving into the main screen.

The 270-degree on-screen experience, as PVR describes it, has the possibility of taking marketing to a new level within cinemas, a captive space that can induce high brand recall. PVR isn’t the only one to drive engagement with new tech, though.

At Inox theatres, for instance, interactive ads, where people can scan the advertisement on screen and download a QR code on their mobile phones, have seen good traction, officials at the chain said.

Over the decades, cinema advertising in India has evolved from still cards to iconic commercials to immersive advertising that can leap out of the big screen.

As K V Sridhar, ad veteran and global chief creative officer at Nihilent-HyperCollective, a Mumbai-based digital agency, says, "I remember seeing the ad for Liril soap featuring the Liril girl, Karen Lunel, in a theatre in Mumbai back in the late 1970s. Cinema advertising has this power to evoke memories. It is also a great chronicler of things, encompassing the journey of India and its advertising market."

Rise, fall and rise

As the only advertising medium in terms of moving pictures before the advent of television in the 1980s, the big screen was the big canvas for national advertisers, as they sought to draw the attention of consumers to their brands, explains Sridhar.

"It is an enclosed space, where people have their full attention on the screen. This unfiltered attention is very typical of cinemas and something that advertisers have always enjoyed," says Rajendra Singh Jyala, chief programming officer at Inox Leisure.

Not just the vivacious Liril girl or the no-nonsense Lalitaji from the Surf washing powder commercial of the 1980s or the sturdy Bajaj Chetak in the “Hamara Bajaj” advertisement towards the end of the 1980s, countless ad films through the 1970s and 1980s were celebrated or dismissed, much like their feature-film counterparts, by audiences in cinema halls.

With the arrival of cable and satellite TV in the 1990s, national advertisers switched to brand-building on TV screens. Brands such as Asian Paints, Fevicol, Cadbury and Vodafone used the reach of mass TV to propagate their message.

Cinemas, in contrast, saw adoption from local brands, as national and regional players moved from television to digital to social media in search of audiences. The growth of multiplex chains in the last few years has seen the attention shift back to national advertisers as cinemas eye a larger share of the overall advertising pie.

Consider this: The cinema advertising market in India, which stood at Rs 1,014 crore in 2019 (or 1.5 per cent of total advertising expenditure), is expected to recover half its size in calendar year 2022, according to estimates by media agencies GroupM and Madison Media.

This will come on the back of a slump in advertising to levels of about 0.2-0.3 per cent of total advertising expenditure or adex in 2020 and 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic and resultant lockdowns and mobility restrictions.

As things stand now, both PVR and Inox, which are listed multiplex chains, said in their June quarter (Q1) results that while advertising income had improved, it still lagged pre-Covid levels. The recovery rate for the two chains in Q1, according to sector analysts, was around 62-65 per cent of pre-Covid levels in terms of advertising. Q1 was the first full quarter of operations for chains without restrictions.

Gautam Dutta, chief executive officer, PVR, said in an earnings call with analysts that the gap of about 38 per cent in advertising recovery rate in Q1 would shrink to 20 per cent in Q2. “By Q3, which is the festive period, when a lot of advertisers begin to advertise, we believe that we will be within the pre-Covid level. By Q4, we will end up exceeding the pre-Covid numbers in terms of advertising,” he said.

Shifting focus

Advertising in cinemas will be driven by a combination of traditional and new-age companies, both PVR and Inox said. Fintech companies, in particular, have been at the forefront of advertising, with the use of interactivity driving engagement.

As Alok Tandon, CEO, Inox Leisure, said in an investor call, “I am not disappointed with the Q1 numbers. I see it as a healthy jump in terms of advertising. Yes, the festive season will see a bounce-back from an advertising perspective.” He added, “Good content is also very important, since it will ensure footfalls. There will be more eyeballs viewing ads as a result.”

With Bollywood struggling to find its feet, following a string of flops at the box office, including the high-profile Aamir Khan-starrer Laal Singh Chaddha, cinema chains are awaiting Hindi blockbusters to drive up footfalls. For now, regional cinema, including dubbed South Indian releases, are helping in this respect.

September, however, will see Brahmastra, featuring Ranbir Kapoor and Alia Bhatt, and Vikram Vedha, starring Hrithik Roshan, hit theatres. The October-December period also has big Hindi movies slated for release: Ram Setu (Akshay Kumar) and Tejas (Kangana Ranaut) in October; Drishyam 2 (Ajay Devgn) in November; and Kabhi Eid Kabhi Diwali (Salman Khan) in December.

 270-degree ads and more 

* Not just the screen, even the walls of the cinema hall are now a canvas for ads. PVR, for instance, used the walls to show a car driving into the screen

* At Inox, interactive ads, where people can scan the QR code of the ad on screen using their phones, have seen good traction

* Fintech firms have been at the forefront of interactive in-cinema advertising

* India's cinema ad market, which was Rs 1,014 crore in 2019 (1.5% of total advertising expenditure), is expected to recover half its size in 2022 after pandemic years