Some time back it was in news that Google tied up with Bollywood Actor Shahrukh khan’s production company Red Chillies Entertainment for promoting his film Ra.One. Besides promoting Ra.One on You Tube, Shahrukh did online chats with fans through Google’s social networking site ‘Google+’ The producers of Ra.One set a record marketing budget of around 52 crore(US$10.55 million), of which 15 crore(US$3.04 million) was used for online promotion, making it the highest ever for a Bollywood film
Often described as the "longest promotion in Bollywood history", as well as "the most comprehensive and all-pervasive among people's lives", the term "promotional blitzkrieg" has often been used in connotation with the project's extensive marketing campaign.
Promotion of the film officially began as early as December 2010 when the first poster was published in all leading news papers across the country. The film's first look was later unveiled by Khan on his Twitter page on January 1, 2011. Several months later, director Anubhav Sinha announced that he would be launching two teaser trailers of the film during the 2011 Cricket World Cup, a prior nine months before the film's actual release date. Asked about why he was launching the film's trailer so early, Sinha commented, "Ra.One is not a Bollywood film that the audiences have seen before. The kind of size and magnitude that the film has requires it to be slowly introduced to the audience and that is the very purpose why we are starting the whole communication so early." The film's first theatrical trailer was released three months later to the public. As a way to promote the theatrical trailer, Khan was accompanied by the director on a five city tour, which included such places like Delhi, Chandigarh, Indore and Ahmedabad. During the same event, a 3600 ft long fan mail collecting audience wishes and messages for the film was also launched.
Even though he used such an aggressive add campaign even though movie did not do wonders on the screen more over some critics said that it is the excessive marketing that created a excessive expectations among public and when they don’t find it up to the level it backfired.
Now the main question is whether what Red Chilli did was right in the current scenario???
Did it really become a victim of excessive marketing???
Would these kinds of marketing strategies (online marketing) flourish in Indian Markets? Who would benefit the most from strategies - Google+ or Ra.One?
By:-
Rohit Goyal
Mercatus Mantra
For More info on the marketing strategy of Ra.one please watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4GaKcHOAmE
Often described as the "longest promotion in Bollywood history", as well as "the most comprehensive and all-pervasive among people's lives", the term "promotional blitzkrieg" has often been used in connotation with the project's extensive marketing campaign.
Promotion of the film officially began as early as December 2010 when the first poster was published in all leading news papers across the country. The film's first look was later unveiled by Khan on his Twitter page on January 1, 2011. Several months later, director Anubhav Sinha announced that he would be launching two teaser trailers of the film during the 2011 Cricket World Cup, a prior nine months before the film's actual release date. Asked about why he was launching the film's trailer so early, Sinha commented, "Ra.One is not a Bollywood film that the audiences have seen before. The kind of size and magnitude that the film has requires it to be slowly introduced to the audience and that is the very purpose why we are starting the whole communication so early." The film's first theatrical trailer was released three months later to the public. As a way to promote the theatrical trailer, Khan was accompanied by the director on a five city tour, which included such places like Delhi, Chandigarh, Indore and Ahmedabad. During the same event, a 3600 ft long fan mail collecting audience wishes and messages for the film was also launched.
Even though he used such an aggressive add campaign even though movie did not do wonders on the screen more over some critics said that it is the excessive marketing that created a excessive expectations among public and when they don’t find it up to the level it backfired.
Now the main question is whether what Red Chilli did was right in the current scenario???
Did it really become a victim of excessive marketing???
Would these kinds of marketing strategies (online marketing) flourish in Indian Markets? Who would benefit the most from strategies - Google+ or Ra.One?
By:-
Rohit Goyal
Mercatus Mantra
For More info on the marketing strategy of Ra.one please watch:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4GaKcHOAmE
I totally agree that marketing is one of the most important aspect of any product and as rightly said excess of everything is bad. Marketing rose the expectations of the audience and response seem to be that their were high expectations out of SRK. But if we compare the promotion of Ra.One with Bodyguard or other movies which did'nt spent such a huge amount on marketing the ROI if other movies seems to be high. But as we all know Social media will be the future and we can't ignore that, what we have to learn is adequate use of it..
ReplyDeleteyeps agree with this reform of marketing in direction of bollywood
ReplyDeleteAgreed Abhishek and prashnna but still the question is that can excessive marketing be so harmful that it may ruin your product???
ReplyDeleteExcessive marketing can't ruin the product but yeah for sure it will drop down the popularity/sales if it will not fulfill the expectations, as it has happened in the Ra.One case and the excess marketing got converted into negative marketing.
ReplyDeletethere is no harm in excessive marketing if there is continuous innovation as in network service providers' ads like that of airtel, vodafone etc....
ReplyDeleteIn all the marketing as 'CR' is referring to like vodafone, airtel and all their is a comparison/ competition and also these products are of daily use and their target audience and marketing strategies are totally different. The same thing is done by Coke and Pepsi, their its the fight about the market share but as we see the movies its about creating awareness about it,i.e., attracting more and more audience...
ReplyDeleteexcessive marketing kills the curosity for the product and heightens customer's expectations and if they don't get upto that level the product gets fails. same was the condition of Ra.one, promotion through gifts, discounts, brochures, toys etc. increased people expectation and the script failed badly.
ReplyDeleteexcessive marketing does not kills the curosity for the product at all..it infact increases the same..but if incase the launch of the same product does not go well then the consumer feels high time disappointed..but on the contrary side MARKETING is all time necessary to attract people towards the product..same did SRK do for Ra.one
ReplyDeleteeverything is good if done in a limit....overmarketing a product/movie or anything lower down its value coz ppl have a perception that if a product is good it doesnt need to be advertised or promoted like some brands for that matter do...have you ever seen a brand like armaani or louis vuitton being overmarketed....the product talkssss...
ReplyDelete@aanchal:
ReplyDeletecurosity increases with the opportunity cost of expectations..that harms in real sense.. promotion should be in a way to invite and tell that yes we have the right product(movie) for you with a good quality and different stuff for your entertainment.. it should not be in a way to beg in front of people to come by attracting them through gifts..... good advertising promotions works....!!
when people expects more and they don't find it upto that level, it works in negative direction..
ReplyDeleteexcessive marketing helps in branding of the movie.The fact that India’s most popular film star, coming up in a new avatar, caught the imagination of everyone. Apart from this, roping in popular international singer Akon added a different dimension to the branding of the movie.Brand loyalty help to protect a business against bad script
ReplyDelete@ deepti And noopur you are right that every thing should be in limit but the problem is who can define that limit after all every one wants to show there product,the main motto of marketing is to increase the curiosity and there is nothing wrong in doing so, recent mob dance at Bombay is the best example of innovative marketing and if Ra.one did that then whats wrong in that or it was a mistake of there management team who failed to understand that India is not ready for Online marketing or matter was something else, we need to think on it, may be learning from it could beware us!!!!!!!
ReplyDeletethe idea of promoting films is not a new one. @ Abhishek as you stated if we compare the marketing strategy of bodyguard and Ra ONE no doubt RA ONE had better promotions. But if we see the content of the films RA ONE was made keeping in mind the kids and teenagers while bodyguard was a pure masala bollywood flick so it had to click. In India it is not the population that goes to the multiplexes that makes a movie a hit but the public that goes to the general theatres
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteRightly said but responding to @Deepti's point, good also needs advertisements coz as rightly mentioned by Mr. Bharat, (Director-World Brand at AIRTEL)at leadership summit at ISB, that we need advertisement to capture the uncaptured market and creating the want their and it also means capturing the market from competitors by providing them good quality and good quality is reflected by advertisements!!
ReplyDelete@ abhishek...i do agree that to capture the uncaptured market we need advertisments,i just said overmarketing is not needed,the result would be forget about capturing the market you would lose the existing customers..the strategy should be such that they create 1 ad and that leaves an impact on the person viewing it rather than person just ignoring it....i shouldnt name the institute but have you seen some xyz insitute creating a hype in the form of print media,internet...wat general people perceive abt it ....
ReplyDelete@deepti...rightly said Deepti but now the main question that arises is how to decide what amount of marketing should be done??
ReplyDeleteTo understand the why marketing strategy did not yield any fruit for Ra.one lets take a deeper look:
ReplyDelete1.I think they suffered from market myopia(to much product concentric)they projected what their product is about to give but failed to understand the true need of the viewer they projected their movie as highly sci-fi but they forgot that viewer want and need is true entertainment.
2.Second thing which went wrong was that they were failed to balance between the perceived expectations and offering,by extensive add campaign they rose expectations while viewers expected a very good level of entertainment they failed to deliver it and created troubles for them...
3. But at one thing they did well that was their customer selection, they selected children and teenagers as their target audience which ultimately resulted in a good revenue....
4.They marketing orientation was more or less a combination of product and selling..
5.They also failed to select right relationship with right customer while they were looking for True Friends, they failed to understand that viewers are Butterflies, so just deliver good product and extract as much as u can....
Rohit Goyal
Team Mercatus