By Anant Mathur (June 24, 2011)
Filmmakers in India have the media convinced and are now trying to convince their audience how important marketing is to a film's success. Well, marketing is important in places like North America where films cost over 100 million dollars, but Indian films are no where near that number. When you're making films for 10 million dollars it doesn't make sense to spend 25 or 50 million dollars on promoting it especially since no Indian film has ever collected 100 million dollars. The highest grossing Bollywood film has collected less than 45 million dollars worldwide. Even though more people watch films in Cinema Halls in India yearly, We must take into account that India also produces more films than any other country - hence the revenue that would go to 500 films in North America is divided amongst 1500 films in India. Producing more films is actually hurting the industry since they lack content.
In North America a bad film that's marketed well can run for weeks - the movie going culture is different, people have more disposable income and they like outings with their friends. In India most people go with their families and it's not marketing that matters it's the story, if the story is dull no amount of marketing or star power can help it run more than one weekend. Recent examples of this include big budget films like "Thank You", "Dum Maaro Dum", "Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey", "Guzaarish", "Kites", "Action Replayy", "Game" and "Blue" which had star power and good marketing but each failed to click at the box office. If marketing worked in India 90% of films wouldn't fail each year - this figure alone tells us that marketing isn't helping these films. Marketing couldn't save the recent releases "Always Kabhi Kabhi" or "Luv Ka The End" - both made by reputed production houses.
On the other hand films without big marketing budgets that have interesting stories are making a dent at the box office and they don't have star power either. Recently we saw some of these in the shape of "Haunted - 3D", "Tanu Weds Manu", "Ragini MMS", "Peepli [Live]".
A good film will work from the first promo itself - take "Dabangg" and "Yamla Pagla Deewana" as examples. The audience was sold on both these films from the first promo after that there was no need for any further marketing. From there it was word of mouth. Once the audience entered the cinema halls they were entertained for 2+ hours and at the end of the day that's what they are seeking... entertainment. The audience is beginning to accept that a film doesn't need to be an original idea as long as it's presented in a new way & entertains them.
The bottom line is, a good film markets itself, no gimmicks are required to pull in the audience when you have a good story. It's bad films that require marketing and wrongly spelled titles for numerological reasons. Good films will succeed, always!
© Anant Mathur. All Rights Reserved.
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