Marketing class 101 in Bollywood

When I was a kid, watching a movie was an event in itself. It would be thoroughly planned in advance with the sheer excitement of buying the tickets, purchasing popcorn, seeing your favorite movie stars, singing with the songs and wanting to repeat the entire 3 hrs again when the movie would finally end. Surprisingly one of my most favorite parts in the whole movie experience would be the trailers of upcoming movies which would be showed before the start and during the interval, as well as the glitzy posters which would nicely be displayed on the cinema buildings. Those were the olden days of bollywood where promoting and marketing the movie were not such an essential part of the whole business. People were so enamored by films in general that no amount of marketing would actually accentuate the feeling. But still, there were some tactics which were used to market films, clearly with the goal of generating curiosity and excitement around it. These ways ranged from movie billboards, fancy posters, trailers etc to the much less occurring interviews which were given by stars on print or on the radio.

But with the humongous increase in competition to the extravagant investment being made into Bollywood, movie marketing has become the most essential aspect of the industry. Earlier only producers would take care of promotions, but today from the producers to the distributors to the theatre owners, all take part in promoting the movie. The marketing of a movie has become very personalized today and there is no preset template that can be used for every movie. Each requires a unique strategy for marketing and branding depending upon the script, actors, target audience etc. So, from Amitabh Bachchan reading news on a news channel to Salman Khan riding a horse on the race course for the movie ‘Veer’, marketing in the industry has become a new mantra today.

It would probably take a whole new article to accurately explain the marketing genius of the great Aamir Khan  who has in some ways pioneered the whole concept in Bollywood, but I shall attempt to summarize everything  in one go. Aamir Khan is known for being a perfectionist and sort of an introvert with no interest in coming to Page 3 parties or socializing, but before the release of his movie you will see him practically everywhere. From the most popular T.V channel to the most niche one, Aamir Khan will always be seen either giving an interview, making a guest appearance, taking up some cause, all in line with the theme of his upcoming movie. Even the BTL (Below the line) marketing activities strategized by Aamir khan’s camp like viral marketing , ambush marketing, multiplex promotions, merchandize are all centered around the same goal which is to generate interest. For the movie ‘Ghajini’, Aamir went around different locations in India giving people the exclusive ghajini cut and providing health tips to people. The theaters came into play when all the ushers in the cinema got the same cut as the main protagonist, just to enhance the audience brand recall. The movie 3 idiots used another innovative tactic when all the washrooms in theatres had the sign, “Be the 4^th idiot”. Such activities have really proved Aamir Khan to be a true revolutionary in the field of promotions and the honour of having various case studies dedicated to his marketing strategy along with invitations to give lectures of marketing in B-Schools. He was also recently awarded the most creative entrepreneur of the year by NDTV Profit for his glorious achievements in the line of marketing & promotions of films.http://www.ndtv.com/video/player/news/creative-entrepreneur-of-the-year-aamir-khan/161420

Even the online platform is being used to a great extent by marketers for viral marketing and online promotions. I have a close friend who works in Google and chatting with him recently, he told me how John Abraham , Ranbir Kapoor interactively use the medium YouTube to promote their movies and stay in touch with their fans. For an upcoming movie, there has been a launch of exclusive moderator interviews with Ranbir kapoor and Priyanka chopra on Eros’s YouTube channel http://www.ranbirkapoor.net/videos/movies-vid/aa-movies-vid/aa_int/piggy-chops-ranbir-promote-anjaana-anjaani/. This shows to the scale the online media is being adopted in various marketing strategies, and with the extreme growth of internet users in India we can expect much more such activities to come.

So, finally we can appropriately conclude that in today’s time period, the script, direction, story, acting, music, cinematography together are incomplete if not accompanied with the essential promotion. As the saying in the industry goes, “if the audience doesn’t develop interest, why will they go and see it.”