Blogging with Aamir Khan

The publicity blitz and marketing activities woven around the Aamir Khan starrer Mangal Pandey "" The Rising seem to be at their peak. On Wednesday, MSN India, the official online partner of the film launched a 'Mangal Pandey look-alike' contest.

The site is offering Mangal Pandey props like the moustache that he sports in the film and long hair and the MSN surfers can use them to make their pictures look like the protagonist of the film and post them on the site. The person who resembles the filmi Mangal Pandey most closely, will be flown to Mumbai for the film's premiere and get to interact with Aamir Khan besides winning a whole bunch of goodies.

The contest happens to be only a part of several innovative initiatives launched by MSN to promote the film online. Besides creating a mini site for Mangal Pandey "" the Rising where users can get to know more about the movie, download exclusive pictures or watch trailers, it also has a link to MSN Space which hosts a Blog by the actor himself. Users can post their comments and interact with Aamir Khan on the blog.

MSN India is the network of Internet services from Microsoft and claims to have over 12 millions users in the country. It has done online promotions for several films in the past like Joggers' Park, Kisna, Bend It Like Beckham, Meenaxi and Parineeta. However, all this while, MSN was creating only micro sites for these films.

"For the first time we have integrated the promotions with an existing property like MSN Space which has the facility for an actual interaction with the star of the film," points out Krishna Prasad, head of programming, MSN, India. Aamir Khan has agreed to log on to the site every week to post his observations and experiences or answer queries by users on the blog.

Prasad claims the MSN promotions have proved to be a big success with the site registering an upsurge in hits. He does not divulge the exact figures though as "they would be available only at the end of the promotions this month," he says.

More traffic, he points out, means more revenue for MSN. "So it's crucial for us to keep up the traffic with innovative features like MSN Spaces (that started in February, 2005) or MSN Search," explains Prasad.

Incidentally, the company just wrapped up its first round of activity with Kaun Banega Crorepati II this week wherein MSN India posted the KBC question on the site and integrated it with MSN Search for the right answer.

So viewers of the programme did not have to wait for the question to appear on TV as they could just log on to the site and get the question as well as the answer. This helped users clear the first hurdle to the hotseat. "We will come back when KBC opens its second round of 'question for the day'," says Prasad.

Committed to bring about quality entertainment on the net, MSN India is in the thick of tie-ups and collaborations with movie houses and music companies for innovative promotional activities.

In Bollywood, it is represented by Movie Talkies a company that is involved with movie promos. "We want to take entertainment to the next level with our innovative services like MSN Spaces and Search," says Prasad.