Showing them the way to mint money, digitally

Mango Mass Media helps movie producers to make bucks by placing movie content such as songs, promotional videos, interviews, etc., on social networking sites much before their release

V. Ramakrishna of Mango MAss Media at a strategy building session in his office in Hyderabad. Photo: By arrangement

Gone are the days when revenues from films only meant those from the sale of audio cassette and compact discs (CDs), actual exhibition of the movies in theatres and of course, the sale of movies to television channels.

Enter the digital era, the revenues of Telugu film content starts with the release of the first trailer, called First Look in the industry, other forms of promotions, including special shoots of selected parts of the shooting and celebrity interactions, apart from selling the audio/video content of the music.

Digital film promotion or ‘monetisation’ using content distribution technology, generously leveraging social networking platformslike ‘YouTube’ and ‘dailymotion’, has been gaining impetus in the past few years. This has come like summer showers for people in the entertainment industry.

With Mango Mass Media, which is the content bank, and Whackedout Media, which is the digital distribution and celebrity management company, marketing the movie content has become quite handy and profitable for many a producer. Mango Mass Media has been providing means for producers to make bucks by placing movie content like songs, promotional videos, interviews, etc. on social networking sites much before the release of a movie.

All these days, producers have paid money to promote their film, we have now shown them how to make money out of promotion itself,” states Veerapaneni Ramakrishna of Mango Mass Media and Whacked Out.

The company’s celebrity division was started to build their own digital platforms that Mango manages. “We have three dozen top stars including NTR, Ramcharan, Kajal Aggarwal, etc. ,” says Mr. Ramakrishna.

Mobile apps

Mango Mobile TV streams subscription video-on-demand serving only overseas audience, giving right value to the content. Mango also has an app that works on different platforms including Android and iOS.

Interestingly, Mango Videos beamed live the much-publicised public meeting of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi at the L.B. Stadium on Sunday.

“This is yet another area where monetising is possible,” says Mr. Ramakrishna, adding that in situations like this BJP meeting, live telecasts would help people who would otherwise have wanted to attend the meeting, but were unable to do so, for a variety of reasons.