‘Yash Raj Films has a Digital-First Strategy’

The Digital ecosystem is helping us open up newer avenues, says Anand Gurnani, Vice President - Digital, Yash Raj Films. In an interaction with Dataquest, he sheds light on the digital revolution and the opportunities it is unfolding for the media and entertainment industry

What are the key elements of your digital strategy? Can you spill some more details?

In recent years, we have witnessed a paradigm shift in consumer behaviour and consumption patterns. In accordance with changing times, we’ve adopted a ‘digital-first’ strategy at Yash Raj Films (YRF). From movie campaigns to catalogue content promotion, digital is the key.

For movie campaigns, efforts are driven towards releasing movie assets online, as opposed to hosting grand event launches. Similarly for our catalogue content, it’s imperative that we reach out to our audiences at all digital touch points.

As far as digital platforms go, if there is any other digital touch point that is emerging, the objective is to be present and have our rich catalogue content available.

How have these digital initiatives helped? Can you give us some measurable statistics that show the benefits of going digital (Increase in market share, improvement in efficiency etc)



More often than not, Bollywood is a game of numbers. If there is one platform that allows direct calculation of ROI – its digital.The tangibility spectrum that digital medium provides goes beyond analytics and allows for direct actionable insights. When a trailer or a song or any other audio-video asset is released, number of views and comments on the asset for instance serves as a direct benchmark to gauge popularity, reactions, and reception of the content served. This sort of rich data helps us not only in tweaking our strategies and marketing approaches but also steers us in taking important business decisions.

What are the key challenges you have faced in your digital journey?

As cosmic as the digital landscape is, it’s equally varied. Even today, there are still untapped streams, conversations and new platforms that keep getting added built day-by-day. The opportunity is limitless.

Proliferation, duplication, and piracy of content is another crucial area that needs stringent digital measures. Currently, this is handled at individual platform level and there is no centralized diktat that covers content owners from such issues.

Please share how digital is opening new opportunities for your company?

Digital has opened up and changed the outlook ‘perception mapping’ for content. As content owners, producers, distributors, and movie marketers, we embrace new technologies, innovations, platforms, and opportunities that help us leverage our leadership position.Each film is a different campaign in itself. Digital being our core, there is always scope to reach out to newer touchpoints even for selling catalogue movies and content.

With the help of our digital ecosystem, we’re opening up newer avenues, geographies by the day and there is only one way to steer, upwards.