Social media effective film marketing tool: R.S. Prasanna

Director R.S. Prasanna is using social networking platforms to create the right buzz for Tamil romantic-comedy "Kalyana Samayal Saadham", releasing Dec 6. He believes it's an effective marketing practice.

"Of course, there's money involved in marketing and my distributors know it better. But social media is a cheap and effective marketing technique because it helps create one-to-one communication with the audience about your film," Prasanna told IANS.

"Kalyana Samayal Saadham" revolves around one big fat south Indian wedding.

Produced by Arun Vaidyanathan, the film features Prasanna Venkatesan and Lekha Washington in the lead roles.

"Since the theme of our film revolves around marriage, all of us have replaced our profile pictures on Facebook with our wedding pictures. This includes me, my producer Arun and lead actor Prasanna. Lekha, who is still single, has been posting best wedding videos available on the net on her wall," Prasanna said.

The idea was to do something innovative.

"Even though it was a planned strategy, we are doing it because we love our film. Instead of counting the days for release, we decided to do something that will stand out and draw the attention of the audience. From profile pictures to personal posts, we wanted everything to be marriage-related," he said.

The creative initiative has been received well.

"We have been getting congratulatory messages from people we don't even know on Facebook. It's a myth that social media is an urban phenomenon, but it's not only for the elitists. Even if audiences take notice of our work on these platforms, we have achieved our purpose," Prasanna said.