Global IPs & The Indian Market | Selected Work
Selected Work · GTM Strategy · Market Localisation · Audience Research · Integrated Campaigns
The Sony Pictures India story, from the other side of the screen.
A Hollywood film might spend two hours in cinemas. Its India-market launch could occupy our desks for months.
At Surfing Monkey, Sony Pictures India was my primary account for nearly three years. As the agency's social and digital strategy lead and primary point of contact, I worked across 30+ Hollywood theatrical campaigns, from early launch planning to opening-weekend execution.
The work began three to four months before the first teaser.
Alongside agency leadership, I developed film-specific launch strategies covering audience segmentation, market opportunities, channel planning, partnerships, promotional concepts and campaign timelines.
And with a slate spanning action, animation, horror, comedy and everything in between, there wasn't exactly a universal playbook.
30+ Campaigns. One very busy operation.
30+ theatrical campaigns · ~20% reported engagement growth · 50M+ cumulative campaign views, impressions and engagement indicators
Each release required its own approach to the Indian market.
The starting point was understanding the film's intended audience, existing franchise equity, local cultural relevance and the communities most likely to engage with it.
That meant researching creators, entertainment pages, regional audiences, fandoms and niche communities across India — looking beyond follower counts to assess audience relevance and partnership fit.
A campaign targeting a particular region, demographic or interest group needed a different creator mix and messaging approach from one built around a mainstream franchise.
Those insights fed into the launch strategy documents I developed with leadership, spanning influencer collaborations, digital advertising concepts, contests, on-ground activations, content pillars and distribution plans.
The job was to translate a global entertainment property into a locally relevant campaign strategy, then help bring that strategy to market.
One Film. Ten Languages. A Rather Complicated Launch.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse was the most operationally demanding campaign of my Sony tenure.
The film's India release spanned 10 languages, multiplying the requirements around asset localisation, creative production, approvals, scheduling and publishing.
The agency's creative teams were producing adaptations at speed, while I coordinated between Sony, our internal teams and campaign partners to keep the rollout aligned.
A single teaser or trailer moment could mean managing numerous regional-language assets across Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and supporting promotional touchpoints.
And the work was happening simultaneously across multiple launch moments, not as a neat sequence of individual posts.
The campaign also presented substantial opportunities for local relevance, particularly through Pavitr Prabhakar and the collaboration with cricketer Shubman Gill.
My contribution covered the campaign's social strategy and execution, partnership research, scripts and copy, creative coordination and multi-platform rollout.
The film went on to become India's highest-grossing animated film at the time, in 2023. That achievement belonged to the broader film, studio and distribution ecosystem.
My role was to deliver a substantial part of its India-market digital campaign, ensuring that the global IP translated effectively across local audiences and platforms.
From Strategy Deck to Release Day
Across the Sony account, my responsibilities connected the entire social and digital campaign lifecycle.
Upstream strategy: Developing launch proposals with leadership, mapping audiences, researching regional opportunities, evaluating creators and shaping campaign concepts months ahead of release.
Campaign development: Translating strategy into creative briefs, content plans, collaboration proposals, scripts, ad concepts, contests and on-ground activation ideas.
Channel ownership: Managing Sony's Instagram and Facebook presence, developing YouTube-specific approaches and overseeing time-sensitive teaser, trailer and promotional rollouts.
Cross-functional delivery: Serving as the primary coordination point between Sony stakeholders, internal creatives, production teams and external partners — from initial plans through final approvals and execution.
Some initiatives were developed independently; others involved close collaboration with agency leadership and the wider team. The consistent responsibility was keeping the strategy and its execution connected.
What the Work Added Up To
Across the account, our campaigns generated a reported 50M+ in cumulative views, impressions and engagement indicators, alongside approximately 20% growth in engagement during my tenure.
Those are account-level indicators across multiple releases and platforms, rather than results attributable to one film or a single intervention.
The larger experience was in repeatedly taking global properties into a complex local market, building audience-specific launch strategies and coordinating their execution at scale.
Thirty-plus releases taught me that even when the product is already made, there's an enormous amount of strategy in deciding who it's for, what makes it relevant and how you get an entire market to pay attention.
And yes, a perfectly timed midnight trailer launch still feels rather satisfying.