Marketing Manthra in Indian Cinema

There was a time in early 2000. Two of the country’s biggest superstar Shahrukh Khan and Aamir Khan had films ready for release. One an average film bashing the media , the other a below average film from an actor par excellence. Nevertheless, market was confident of these movies doing great business. But these two movies flopped and a dark horse called Kaho Naa Pyar Hai walked away with all the honors and launched a new superstar for the country.

The scenario now is completely different. Now there are many other things apart from the merits of a movie to make a movie a hit. And Actors, Directors, Producers, Script writers and even the persons who claim to have own the script have a huge media presence and they all contribute in their own way to make a movie hit. Here is a brief list of what all has changed and the various means the current film industry uses to promote and run their movie

> Create as much controversy as possible. Make every Indian have the name of your movie on his lips. SRK declaring that he was frisked at an US airport just because of his surname and that this whole tale had striking similarity with his latest film, My name is Khan is a glowing example of the same. Adding fuel to the fire is his statements supporting inclusion of Pakistani players in IPL and the outrage expressed over it by Shiv Sena and all the controversies surrounding it. Media calling SRK a hero and hailing him as victorious. What is lost somewhere among all this mist is the story of the movie, the merits of the movie, the strengths of the movie.

> Another example of controversies is the controversy surrounding the movie 3 idiots. The whole cry made by Chetan Bhagat worked in favor of both his book Five Point someone and the movie 3 idiots. Added to that there were umpteen number of debates on all famous news channels about whether what the movie showed was right about the country’s current education system, which again popularized the movie.

> Next thing on the list would be promoting the movie unconventional ways. Using twitter, facebook and other internet media and also appearing on all major dance shows, music shows, singing contest, comedy shows with the full team of the movie and going ga ga over the movie . We have seen Siddharth promoting his movie Striker on twitter, releasing it in youtube was indeed a good move, SRK, Karan Johar for MNIK, and a host of other stars are on twitter promoting the movies speaking all good things about the movie.

> Down south in Tamil Nadu, the story is a bit different. Make a complete movie and sell it to the media tycoons owning one of the TV channels in the state. They will do the rest. Starting from showing the promos every ten minutes during their prime shows to giving raving reviews and ratings in their shows, they do all that is needed for making these movies a hit

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Recent example to this would be the movie Endhiran made under the banner of Sun Pictures, produced by Kalanathi Maran, who is apparently one of the richest persons in the country and is one of the most influential persons in the state of Tamil Nadu.

The Movie Endhiran (Robot in Hindi) has been in news ever since it started. With the earlier producers of the film, Ayangaran pulling out due to budget constraints in a time when the entire world  was under the grip of recession, Sun pictures cashed in the opportunity. In fact this will be the first film produced completely by Sun Pictures which has been buying and releasing films till now and has been doing a very good job in it. ( Kalanithi Maran has left no stone unturned in making and marketing of this movie. He is using all his channels and contacts effectively for the marketing of the movie. Watch any sun network channel and you will see endhiran trailer every 5-10 minutes. Suriyan FM, owned by Sun network is playing out songs of Endhiran along with special features like singers and music directors sharing their experience in between the songs.)

As a result of these, the movies which are really good and fail on the above aspects like Rocket Singh in Hindi and Peranmai in Tamil, fail to do good business. It is time for the people involved in these movies also to concentrate on the above aspects as just making a good movie is not enough, spreading the goodness around is as much important.
Now, having said these, I am not one of those who is criticizing these moves or saying these should be stopped. After all like all the businesses, movie making is also a business with profits as the main motive. This post is about the changing face of the movie industry and the way the whole dynamics of the industry is changing.