Decoding Marketing of Bang Bang

It's official. Bang Bang has collected Rs. 26 cr. in its first day. That too with heavy competition from Haider. Many will say that Bang Bang has damaged Haider but in my honest opinion, Haider has managed to make a way bigger dent to Bang Bang. Haider has collected approx Rs. 6 cr. in its first day. Haider would not have collected more then that even if it was a solo release. But Bang Bang would have been able to collect around Rs. 30 cr. on its first day.

Bang Bang is probably one of very well marketed film of recent times. They released their cards on the right time which made the great impact. In movie marketing a good trailer gets your job done by 90% and Bang Bang had a very very impactful trailer. Post trailer every content of theirs was a winner. Their first song Tu Mera was an instant hit, second song Meharbaan has the romantic vibe and promotional title track has the all required omph. It would be wise to say that Bang Bang did less but their every move was very impactful. Hrithik & Katrina never went to any reality show for promotion of film and they also didn't do multiple city visits.

The reason why we should say that their trailer was a hit because the film was very cold before the trailer release. Hrithik was freshly out of his 13 years long marriage and was not in good space. Also Katrina Kaif was last seen in Dhoom 3 which was not appreciated much.

But highlight of the marketing campaign was their #BangBangDare online campaign. This stole the show. Hrithik Roshan gave dare to Shahrukh Khan, Ranveer Singh, Priyanka Chopra, Nargis Fakhri etc. I think inspiration for this must have come from ALS #IceBucketChallenge But still the right application made it what it is.

Also I would mention Hrithik Roshan's unfortunate head injury. The near death injury (and trust me, it was near death head injury) added a lot of value to movie. It became something like Mr. Amitabh Bachchan's Koolie injury. Not that big but still very impactful.

Ranveer Singh's Dare

Nargis Fakhri's Dare

Shraddha Kapoor's Dare

Farhan Akhtar's Dare

Aamir Khan's Dare

The Dirty Picture... 5th Biggest opening of 2011

It has been dirty for past few weeks and the results have been magnificent. The movie has opened as 5th biggest opening by beating Singham. Many will say that it was all about sex and thats why people went and watched it. But i would like to remind then that there have been too many movies based completely on sex like 4, girlfriend etc. and none of them was even able to survive for even one day at box office. The idea of the movie was very big and indeed innovative which made a 12 cr. movie profitable on its second day of release.
Also the marketing of the movie worked very well for it. Never they did shy away from the fact that this is a movie based upon sex. Even Vidya Balan in her interviews stated that this is 'A' certified film and not meant for family audiences.
Also few things like Vidya Balan's KBC appearance and Emran Hashami's Patna and Lucknow city visit worked brilliantly for the film. Infact, UP, Rajasthan and Bihar has proved to be the cow belt for this film.
We should not get surprised if this movie touches 100 cr. mark as this kind of opening was also too shocking/surprising for many.

Good news... Aishwarya sneezed twice...

Yeah... you heard it right. Aishwarya Rai sneezed twice... according to our own well respected Bhole Baba it’s a really good sign. Baba has confirmed that the Bachchan couple will have a son. 

What a world we are living in. Are we this insane that we need to know every single detail of Aishwarya Rais pregnancy? The media is daily reporting something about Aishwarya Rai and how Amitabh Bachchan is furious about it. But is this a fault of Media? I tried to analyze that how always the Bachchan family become the victim of Media. How their wedding and everthing personal they do become a national issue. I mean i have seen only Bachchan family who gets so much harassed by media. There can be only 2 reasons to this. Either Bachchan family is the most important family of

India which i would not believe. Or Bachchan family does something which attracts media to write about them. 
This led me to do some research of Sr. Bachchans public interactions. I was taken by surprise to know that he write long blog every night before going to sleep. This he has been doing from past 1306 days. Can you imagine? Every day he has an opinion about something. Plus he tweets at least 10 times a day. No wonder he is in news every day.

My question is that is fame so important that you actually write a blog every day? And after that you slam on media to report so much on you’re soon to arrive grandchild. As a celebrity people sometime forget that marketing of celebrity brand is different from marketing of products. Here being in news everyday is not good. You need to be quite some time. We agree that you might be very excited about your grandchild but please if you want your privacy, be a bit media shy and reduce interacting about your personal life on public forums. I sincerely wish that your grandchild may not bring the havoc which your son’s wedding did in media.

Rockstar!!!

Frankly speaking I dont think that i have enough power to write a single word about this masterpiece. If I was the director of this film, I would have never believed that I made such a beautiful film. If I was to write the review of this film, I would have resigned as the film cant be reviewed. If I was the projector guy of this film, I would have watched every scene of this film standing all day for all weeks with a tear in my eye. For me Rockstar defines love. The film is eternal. I can truly understand if anyone disagree with me. This post is not my usual post on marketing of film. The movie is about Love and this post is more relevant to people who believe in love. When i started this blog i decided that Ill never post my personal feelings in this blog. But I was so impressed by the movie that i had to post something about it here...
Its like you are reading a poem. A poem of love. In short the movie is about the Rumi's poem "Yaha se bahut door, Galat aur sahi ke paar, ek maidaan hai. Main waha milunga tujhe!!!"

RA.One

I know I’ve talked a lot about the movie and now the movie has released, I should let numbers do the talking. But sometime it’s not just about numbers and I’m not saying this because the movie has done well. I have been constantly stating that this movie will open big, but at what cost? There is a concept of film marketing, which state that marketing is majorly done to get a good opening. Also according to one independent research, on an average 40% of film collections are on first 3 days of release. Now if we have 53 cr. as first 3 days collections of RA.One, and we already know that around 50 cr. were spend on the marketing of film. Plus if you calculate Shah Rukh Khan’s time to it, it will emerge as not a profitable proposition.

Everybody says that Shah Rukh Khan is a good marketer. I’ll strongly disagree to that because a good marketer knows how much marketing is to be done for a product. In entertainment industry creating lot od noise may also sometime go negative. Ram Gopal Verma Ki Aag is a classic example of that. Ram Gopal Verma went gaga over his film and went out of his way in promotion of film. As he did fantastic promotion, now nobody will ever be able to forget that movie. His over marketing created a long term dent on his image. RA.One was a decent film which required decent marketing. I agree that he had made a very costly film but the content and appeal of film was not very entertaining and hence people came out disappointed as they were expecting a lot.

I would also like to quote Aamir Khan in this context. Not many people know that Aamir is working on a project which is produced by Excell Entertainment. Not Aamir is on roll as his past films Ghajini and 3 idiots have been blockbusters. Aamir could have gone gaga about his upcoming film as there is less than 5 months in its release. But Aamir intelligently is keeping hopes of the audience low as it is not a massy film. Same he did in Dhobi Ghaat. He knew that the film will not work in small screens so he promoted it as Kiran Rao’s film and not Aamir Khan’s film.

Bodyguard!!!

It was Wednesday evening when I got the early estimates from my office about the first day collections of Bodyguard. According to a source, the movie was looking like 18+ in its first day. I didn't belived it. Firstly because 'It was from a SOURCE' and secondly because I had never trusted to the sources of someone who has worked on the film, they always inflate the actual numbers. So I was expecting a figure around 15 or 16. But that was not bad at all. Last year Dabangg made the record opening of 14.5 on Friday and Bodyguard was all set to brake that record. I was completely satisfied that movie will be the biggest opener for the rest of the year (considering RA.1 will not get that big response).
In the evening i had a meeting at Juhu and after that i decided to visit Chandan Cinema at Juhu which is a single screen theater next to PVR Juhu. I was amazed to know see huge crowd outside theater disappointed as the tickets for the whole day were sold out. Also after a long long time i spotted a guy selling tickets in Black. This amused me so much that i wanted to check the situation at PVR too. And to my surprise the tickets were all sold out at a multiplex too. Amazing!!!
Later in the evening i got the report from boxofficeindia.com stating that Bodyguard has grossed over 20 Cr. in a single day. This was huge considering that this was the biggest day at Box Office ever. The movie released on more then 2700 screens with more then 2000 prints and still all the shows everywhere were houseful. At Noida all the shows were sold out in advance in all the multiplexes. In Indore itself the movie had 147 shows which increased over the day as the demand was very high.
Over few days the movie still has managed to do great business and is sustaining at most of the markets.
Now lets have a look how did this happened. Most of you will say that this all was Salman effect. So my question to you will be that where was this effect when Ready released. I agree that Ready was also a big hit, but it was not bigger then even Dabangg whereas, Bodyguard has surpassed the first day collections of Dabangg by huge difference. This in not just Salman effect. the marketing worked for the film starting from the first day. This was a action romance film and perfect for Salman's fans. But in real Shera- Salman's real life bodyguard did the trick. He was made the face of movie and he addressed media several times. Media also showed keen interest in Shera who doesn't get much gossip from Salman otherwise. Shera spoke confidently about Bhai and his life beyond movie and meanwhile gave a push to marketing of Bodyguard. Second most exploited tool was pair of Salman-Kareena. Both Kareena and Salman have been part of many blockbuster movies in recent times. The movie was positioned in a manner that they come to give you biggest blockbuster ever. This did the trick. The movie became the biggest release ever even before its release. And that's how everyone got excited to watch the movie first day which they knew was the biggest movie of the year. 

Bbhudda clash with Delhi Belly

So here i’m back and really angry with one time legend and highly regarded actor Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. This in regards to recent activities and comments he has made on his movie and Delhi Belly. Now this is a known fact that Delhi Belly which was a experimental film by Aamir Khan has been widely accepted and has managed to collect over 26  crore in first 3 days whereas Bbhuddha... which was ambitious comeback film from Mr. Bachchan has just done reasonable opening of Rs. 8 crore. (*According to data available on www.boxofficeindia.com and www.bollywoodhungama.com). The problem is that Big B is not ready to accept this reality and has started commenting on the business of Delhi Belly and also stated that the collections are wrongly reported from the influence of Aamir Khan Production. As his comment in one of his post was “DB is good in select multiplexes and overseas pockets only. At 25-30% it has had a weak start in metros like Calcutta (10% in some cases), Jaipur, Pune, Surat and emerging Hindi metros like Kanpur and even Bombay is nowhere near as expected with Saturday collections clocking barely 25-30% bookings at multiplexes like Fame Adlabs still. Tickets are readily available most everywhere.” which is not true. I was struggling for only one ticket of the 8:40 show on Saturday and had to watch 10:05 show in PVR Oberoi mall. This shows that not even single seat was empty anywhere.

Sure Amitabh was not prepared for this. He has thought of Delhi Belly as a very niche movie and always had this thing in his mind that Bbhudda will do better business then DB. And he has reason to think this ways. BHTB was a proper masala bollywood film whereas DB was some experimental English movie. And box office has shown good numbers for all bollwood masala movies recently. BHTB was inspired by Dharmendra Yamla Pagla Deewana which did great business even though Dharamji and his boys are not as big star as BIG B.

Let’s talk about Aamirs DB. One should be very careful to release his movie alongside Aamir’s movie even if it is some experiment from AKP. We should not forget that Aamir is best known for experimenting and making them a success. I still remember a story told to me by insider that everyone on the marketing team was shocked when prior to release of Taare Zameen Pe Aamir announced that “this should not be treated as a small film and I expect this to be the biggest hit of the year.” It was appearent that even without any bollywood masala or a female lead the film was the biggest hit of the year. So this proves that  one should not underestimate Aamir’s movie at any cost.