The digital space encompassing Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and other networking platforms has become immensely crucial in maximising the hype and the word of mouth for a film. Impressively enough, stars, actors, technicians, directors in the Telugu film industry have gone out of the way to promote each other’s films in their social media handles with a big heart. It tells a thing or two about the goodwill among Telugu film celebrities and the idea that they collectively aim for the well-being of the industry. This is very much unlike Bollywood where corporate companies drive promotions and the personal touch in this activity is missing.
Recently, Jr NTR had a word of encouragement for dancer Sandhya Raju’s Tollywood debut Natyam and even launched its teaser that registered good hits on YouTube. The teaser even went onto be the topmost trending video on YouTube, garnering close to 6 million views. However, the team behind Natyam’s promotions went overboard when they had launched a poster claiming the views were a result of the ‘Power of NTR garu, fans and audience’.
While the intention behind this message may have been harmless, this choice of words had every chance to be misinterpreted and can even incite fan wars on social media. This poster claims as if Jr NTR was the only reason for the record number of hits for the teaser and the word ‘power’ can be easily misread as the social media reach of the star. Actors like Ram Charan, Prabhas, Mahesh Babu extend their help to release promos of many films on social media frequently and this may result in an unnecessary comparison to judge the digital ‘power’ of stars. This can gradually become a factor to discuss the stardom of an actor.
It might also come to a stage where Tollywood stars, fearing extreme reactions between the fans, could express reluctance about promoting other films on their handles. One already knows how distastefully can the fans of a particular star can react to the content of another star on social media. Exercising some caution in the choice of words during promotions can cut all this drama.