MUMBAI: In-film advertising is rapidly becoming a great place for brands to collaborate with movies. To optimise the equation of expense, integration and impact, Mofam, a financial services company has launched ‘Bfund’, a fund partner to consumer brands to convert their recurring expense for in-movie product placements into a returnable investment.
Brands currently incur an expense per movie to tacitly make their brand visible. Bfund takes funds from brands only in the first year, and rotates it multiple times over a five-year tenure and returns the same with accumulated NAV at the end of the fund life.
Started by marketing, media and procurement veteran Raja Peter and career investment management professional and ex-head of private equity at Essel Finance, Sumit Mody, Bfund is a scalable solution by Mofam that helps identify movie projects, brand slots within scripts and creative leverage in feature films across the industry.
Peter says, “Marketers the world over look to maximise brand awareness at the lowest cost; Bfund is that vehicle for cinema in India. Bfund will work closely with brands to ensure a brand is ensconced within a choice of movies and genres. Our initiative will help deliver deeper brand integration across multiple movies at significantly lower CPM in this critical medium of popular culture.”
To take this unique fund to the India advertising market, Bfund is collaborating with GroupM’s Mindshare, India’s largest media and marketing investment agency. Through this alliance, Mindshare clients will get a first-mover advantage in access to product placement in theatrical releases at a lower cost.
“Product placement in theatrical releases represents an increasingly valuable way for brands to reach targeted consumers,” adds WPP India and CEO GroupM South Asia country manager CVL Srinivas. “By creating a mechanism for marketers to collaborate with film producers at early development stages in filmmaking, innovative and impactful brand integrations can be conceived and developed.”
Adding his thoughts on the alliance, Mindshare South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar mentions, “Cinema is a uniquely immersive medium and represents an opportunity for a brand to get noticed with undivided attention. We are excited to deliver to our clients a real competitive advantage in this medium.”
Bfund is targeting a fund size of Rs 120 crore for Bollywood movies and another Rs 80 crore for Tollywood movies. It expects to start deployment from both funds by next quarter and will primarily look at star-rated projects. Investment size can be up to Rs 20 crore per project.
