Ice Cream's campaigns melt hearts in Mangaluru

MANGALURU: The fledgling Tulu film industry is fast learning the tricks of the trade. Promotional activities are in full swing for the much-awaited Tulu movie Ice Cream, which will hit the big screen on October 16. The film crew has begun to broadcast teaser trailers, songs and messages from Sandalwood stalwarts, such as Upendra and music director Guru Kiran, using a trailer-mounted LED screen.
The crew is confident that the publicity drive will set the tempo before the movie release. Navitha Jain and Preetham Sagar, the producers of the movie, said that the promos are necessary as all the actors in the film are newcomers. "The average age of our actors is around 35 years," said Jain, adding that the Gen Y actors will need all the push. "That's why we conceptualized the idea of hiring a large LED screen from a Bengaluru-based vendor," she said, adding that it's a tried and tested method and many political parties have made use of this approach.
Pointing out that Hollywood and Sandalwood have pioneered the use of the extended pre-launch publicity drives using social media, Sagar said, "We too have dabbled in this endeavor in our own way. We created a Facebook page and ran social media campaigns and competitions to coincide with our audio launch. This gave us the much-needed boost," he said, adding that the Facebook page has garnered over 11,000 likes. "We have also used WhatsApp to promote the movie," he added.
Roopesh Shetty, a radio jockey-turned actor, who is making his debut too is gung ho about the use of LED screen. "The screen has been drawing a huge crowd wherever it was installed in the past few days," he said, adding that such type of publicity could become the norm for Tulu film industry in the future.
Vouching for the effectiveness of Facebook, Roopesh said that the film crew kept its followers updated on every development pertaining to the movie and even introduced the 20 actors in a phased manner on the Facebook page.