Jo promote karega, wohi jeetega!

Promotions, publicity and more, Bollywood films have no qualms about accepting that flamboyance is the only way to get people into cinemas to watch a film. Word of mouth publicity has become a thing of the past; however these days, through very carefully planned promotions and publicity stunts, the audience is being wooed into watching a film. The idea is to get your attention at any cost. Just a few months before the release of the muchhyped RA.One, Shahrukh Khan left no stone unturned. He went from selling merchandise related to the film to setting up games on Facebook, YouTube, even television promotions, among others. Suddenly we saw him appear in a string of talk shows and interviews on various news channels. There was even a ‘leaked’ version of Chammak Challo that did the rounds before the film’s official audio release. Now whether this translated into box office success or not is hard to determine. Not undermining King Khan’s efforts, but we all would like to believe that ‘a good product sells itself’. However, if this was true, why do many small budget films that are strong on content and performance not achieve any box office success at all?

Every film requires to be promoted, and through the right means. We’ve got to remember that Bollywood films now have a global audience and it has become more essential than ever before to connect and interact with the audience. But are the Bollywood stars actually taking things a bit too far?

It’s not about posters and ‘dialogue-baazi’ anymore at press events or music releases. It’s now being called the film promotion ‘Blizterkrieg’! Not very long ago, the cast of the film Players did the rounds. At the film’s music release they did a live stunt show!

Complete with Bipasha Basu standing atop a motor vehicle that was ‘dangerously’ driven down a wooden plank surrounded by fire! Not what one would expect at an audio launch, right? What was the point of the stunt? The filmmaker believed that since it was an action-oriented flick, this would be the best way to give the audience a feel of it. (Now if only the film was half as thrilling as the stunt…) With headline grabbers like “Bollywood hunk John Abraham lifts and throws 115-kg bike” and “Genelia D’Souza is married to John Abraham”, how can anyone possibly escape noticing the film? John, at an event, decided to lift and toss a 115 kg bike before the media. Only on watching the film I realized that John’s character in the film does this as a part of a fight sequence in the film. I must admit though that until then, I was completely befuddled by the whole event! The film was called Force, but what happened to it at the box office? Well, let’s just not go there…

Now that Genelia D’Souza is actually married to Ritiesh Deshmukh, we’ve seen that the newlyweds are not missing out on any opportunity to cash in on this event in their lives towards promoting their film Tere Naal Love Ho Gaya. Apparently they are sacrificing the possibility of a honeymoon because of their commitments to promote the film. One does only hope that the bliss continues for them at the box office!

It is being said that a trend followed in Hollywood is all set to take Bollywood by storm. According to Omar Qureshi, the Hollywood trend where the marketing of a film costs almost as much as its actual budget seems to be catching up in B-town and how! Huge amounts of money were spent in promotions for the film Rockstar, including live stage performances by Ranbir Kapoor, a massive dandiya event and even a live performance by AR Rahman with Ranbir on stage!

We even saw Salman Khan’s bodyguard very gallantly walk the ramp and make stage appearances for the film Bodyguard along with Salman Khan and Kareena Kapoor. Salman even quipped that he would now perhaps need a bodyguard for his own bodyguard as a result of all the hype!

Some of the recent film promotions have been quite hitech, like Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara which was heavily promoted through mobile channels. Partnering with Aircel, 2-minute trailers were shared with its 55 million subscribers! In this age of Kolaveri Di the use of internet channels and particularly that of YouTube has become inevitable. The Delhi Belly crew created an interactive video channel and the marketers of the film used this

The Delhi Belly crew created an interactive video channel and the marketers of the film used this platform to create an interactive karaoke jukebox containing songs from the film platform to create an interactive karaoke jukebox containing songs from the film. A clever idea, and one that is quite cost effective as well!

Some promotions have been quite eccentric as well; take, for example, the film Dev D. The makers of the film sent condoms along with the invites. They even went to the extent of setting up phone lines for people to discuss relationships to promote their film! The film Udaan was an exceptional work of art, and the promotions for the film were again quite unusual. The film’s producer Anurag Kashyap and actor Rajat Barmecha actually bashed up a car in public as a part of the film’s promotion!

Ram Gopal Verma (RGV) nowadays has decided to not only shock but also disgust or offend people in many ways, quite unabashedly and deliberately. He once decided to hang a dummy dead body on hoardings to promote his film Agyaat! This was obviously not received well by the public, in fact police complaints were filed against him.

This only leads us to one question, how much is too much? Promotions can only help generate curiosity, but in the long run the film speaks for itself. It’s just like selling a product or service. You could spend millions on advertising it, but that will only create short-term success followed by accelerated losses if the product doesn’t live up to the promise.

In the age of remakes and remixes it’s hard to see original scripts and stories portrayed. Some films completely lack authenticity by being mere copies of Hollywood flicks. In a country with 1.22 billion and still counting, is there not even one single story worth telling? Let’s just hope that films in the future have more to offer than just ‘Sheila ki Jawani’ and ladoos distributed at cinema halls.

ABHILASHA