In keeping with its innovative marketing tactics, the recently released film “Chennai Express” has just delivered a master stroke. It’s for the first time that an actor will host a Facebook Live Chat to connect to fans in India and the world on the Facebook Page “iamsrk”. The movie is already in the news for the most unique and widespread marketing gimmicks. Shahrukh Khan and Rohit Shetty have decided to use the Hashtag to reply to their fans on Facebook.

Facebook boasts of more than 4.75 billion pieces of content being shared on the website. Taking a leaf out of Twitter’s book, Facebook recently launched the very useful and trendy hashtag feature to enable people and businesses to engage in conversations. The questions for SRK and Shetty will be gathered using #hashtags apart from the ones that are asked on the live stream. The date scheduled for this unique experience for SRK and Facebook fans is August 14 at 9 PM.

Shahrukh Khan, who has been hyperactive in promoting the film, is no less excited about this conversation. “I look forward to connecting and chatting with all my fans on the Facebook Live Chat. I’m really excited about sharing my experiences while shooting Chennai Express and would love to answer questions about the movie and other things people may wish to ask. It’s going to be a lot of fun on Facebook, so Ready, Steady, Po!”

Shailja Gupta, the Chief Digital Strategist for Red Chillies said, “Shahrukh has always been very proactive on social networks and loves interacting with his fans online and after the mega success of Chennai Express we thought this would be a great opportunity for him to interact with his fans”.

The Hashtag has been an instant success with the top brands on Facebook. About 56% of the Interbrand’s Top 100 brands made more than 250 posts with at least one hashtag in the first week of the launch of Facebook Hashtags. Brands such as Allen Solly, Reliance Mobile, Kingfisher, Greenpeace India and Mahindra Rise have been using this to make themselves and their content more discoverable on Facebook.

With Red Chillies choosing to use this new Facebook feature, it seems the Facebook Hashtag is here to stay and marketers will continue to use it for their respective business pursuits.