Film promotion and marketing in India
As the competition aggravates to gain the maximum attention amongst the other releases, newer and innovative techniques are being adopted by film makers to get audiences into the cinemas.
THE INDIAN film industry has travelled a burgeoning journey from its first feature film in 1913 to huge budget films like ‘3 Idiots’ and ‘My Name is Khan’ today. As the nation developed, so did the Indian Cinema. In the last few years the movie industry in India has metamorphosed itself into a fully grown professional business unit and with new innovative techniques of film promotion, it is developing at a faster rate to mint more and more money. With almost two to three releases every Friday, a movie has to fight this clutter and create a distinct place in the audience’s mind to attract it to the theatre first. More importantly, Marketing of a movie is all about creating instant brand identity. As films have limited distribution window and therefore a limited shelf life, the marketing has to happen at absolutely the right time to get audiences into the cinemas.
The film makers have adopted newer techniques from time to time to promote their film. One of the very common forms of marketing is the in-film branding. Mutual in nature, in-film marketing not only helps the product get a mention and visibility in a film to an audience but it also benefits the film to a large extent. Apart from monetary benefit to the production of the film from the brand owners, the commercial ads of these products promote the film throughout. The best example of this promotional technique is the film ‘Ghajini’. Its tie-up with Van Huesen became a huge success and strengthened the promotion of the film. Apart from that, one could find its presence across all mediums, be it TV, print, outdoor, Internet, mall activation or cinema activation.
Moreover, to become the primary choice of the audience on the weekend, the film-makers are trying out more scientific and innovative techniques like the interaction based strategies. The promotion of ‘3 Idiots’ by Aamir Khan’s unique tour across the seven cities of India was an outstanding idea to connect with the people and create curiosity about the film. And with this trend, now even the film stars have become very conscious about marketing. They are now actively involved. There is so much the marketers do when the star gets involved like specials, radio contest, integration and online chat. However one of the major mediums of marketing these days; the digital medium is not being utilized to the best for film promotions in India. There are very few producers and studios which understand the medium well. Moreover, even though the focus is on the consumers now, B2B marketing will never take a backseat. The big banner production houses are still focused on the distributors. Online is more for the consumers and not for the distributors. So, when it comes to them, online takes a backseat.
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