Val Morgan’s Cally Scivetti argues that overlooking our No.1 cultural activity is nonsensical at a time when our growing South and East Asian populations are more in love with the silver screen than ever before.
Ahead of AdNews Live: Reframing Australia, the Val Morgan Marketer explains why brands that don’t adopt a cinema tactic will lose, and hints at some of the startling statistics she will unveil at the event this Wednesday.
Bigger than cricket? Hard to believe maybe, however Roy Morgan shows that 71% of Chinese Australians and 74% of Indian Australians went to the movies in 2016. To give you some perspective our multicultural partners at Red Elephant revealed that only 40% of Indians follow the cricket.
There are still tickets available for AdNews Live: Reframing Australia
There are several migrant groups who have made Australia what it is today, but the two dominant markets are definable by their sheer size: South & East Asian, and it is these two cultures that are helping to reframe Australia.
Reaching those populations with meaningful, on-brand messaging is a challenge, as even some of those who play successfully in the area will tell you.
Cinema holds a special place in the hearts of Australia’s immigrants, and its influence is on the rise, showing that brands encapsulating a cinema strategy will reap the benefits of one-stop mass market advertising to key multicultural groups.
Big Asian movies with big stars translates to big movies here in Australia, and cinema can now provide a brand safe, guaranteed multicultural audience for advertisers.
Last year Australian cinemas screened over 120 Asian movies for those living locally in Australia – 80 from Bollywood and 60 from East Asia. Combined these movies delivered over 2.0m admissions up 25% from the previous year.
Australian audiences were ready and waiting for Baahubali 2: The Conclusion - a 2017 Indian historical epic film. It was originally made in Telugu and Tamil and dubbed into Hindi, Malayalam, German, French, Japanese and English.
Cinemas were sold out, extra sessions were opened, and it had the biggest Bollywood opening of all time. It debuted to $1.4M and has gone on to become the largest Indian release of all time with over 200,000 cinema admits.
Meanwhile, earlier this year, Chinese title Wolf Warrior 2 became the highest-grossing Chinese title in Australia with $1.7M and counting at the box office.
Locally, cinema attendance is in great shape – for the last 5 years we have seen the box office cross $1.1bn and over 90M in ticket sales. Leveraging cinema to develop specialised, and targeted messaging for those flooding through the cinema foyers is a step to winning the hearts of this rapidly changing and culturally-diverse nation.
VM Marketer Cally Scivetti will present a full rundown of the cinema group's findings at AdNews Live: Reframing Australia.
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