Ghajini Strategy or Kangaali
Holy cow! Is it about the movie anymore?
Cannot blame Aamir as he does what should be done, so he grows muscles, makes those lovely intriguing posters, talks about his diet, his trainer (we know his name too, “Satya”) also talks about his diet, we are also told that Kiran Rao, the missus told somewhere during the training “Bas Karo, Maar daaloge kya??”, some lady in Bangalore frets as it is her number flashed on Aamir’s tricep(or was it the upper left 4th pack), then the music and even ARR comes into answer stuff about how Guzaarish was conceived, how Javed Ali sang that and all that.
So what, if we are not so enamoured after seeing the movie. They shall always say that the money (all of Rupaiyah 170 crores, mama) is travelling to the bank in sackfuls. I correct myself, they are saying it all over the place. The critics are rubbished. They always were. Remember Dhoom, Welcome, Golmaal Returns, Dostana! So!!
That brings me to something else. Swing back your mental pendulum to something called Love Story 2050 and Drona. They also went ballistic with the Harman B and Priyanka C romance/ Abhishek’s pally giri with Goldie and PC with her swordsmanship here. Why did they not work? You shall say content. I shall say “Heck”.
Why? They are all very ordinary faff. But, here lies the rub (not Rab..no no I am not blaming it on the YRF God..last heard every movie that they shall produce shall start and end at Golden Temple, Amritsar). Aamir’s strategy is a step up strategy. If you notice, it all starts with his personal attributes and how he develops himself for a movie. Then, he goes into the other aspects. Music, Lyrics, Cast, Direction and the juicy picks from the story itself. He hammers away at the publicity lines like crazy till everyone is singing along with him.
Lets again revisit Ghajini’s publicity. First, the poster arrived. Then the song promos. Then, the interviews about the physique and banter about how it was done. More Posters. Then, the campaign about the music and the lyrics. Then, the heroines. Asin and Jiah. The little controversies uploaded. Asin’s appearances. Aamir’s introductions. Advance Booking wonders advertised. Paid previews sold out. So, while critics were writing “not so great”, ads saying mega stuff coming out. Aamir continues to plug away. Appearances galore. The hair cutting gig in Delhi of all places!
The movie has a extended weekend. Full houses. Record number of prints. That is advertised again. No let down. Breathless Aamir is still at it. End result. 170 crores. You don’t want to believe it. Take a hike!
Last I saw Aamir in TV space, he was plugging Bachchan who was plugging “Ghajini”. Very Intelligent.
Idhar no Word of Mouth or no Viral. That is all for movies without Mai Baap. Here is Publicity Budget equivalent to Production Budget. Practically. The Godzilla Formula! 700 Million Production Budget and 730 Million first week takeaway. Bad Movie. DVD flop. Theatre Mega Hit. Kya Bolta!!
Maal Hai to taal hai, varna sab kangaal hai!!
But, Drona had the maal. Love Story 2050 did too. Then what happened? Precisely this. The movie lost its relevance to the customer somewhere in the promos. Go by the step up strategy. The “step up” never happened. Still born strategy in Marketing. Drona kept repeating the super human and PC karate bits. 2050 was concentrating on Harman. He. The man. Himself. His sweetheart. His father. Where did the movies go as products? To the stable. Andar.
This year only one movie did well in spite of its marketing and that was “A Wednesday”. Still the UTV gang seem to be a little better with their stuff.
Any lessons here??
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Indraneel- I completely agree with you on A Wednesday succeeding inspite of its marketing.The credit goes to a good product aided by excellent WOM which enabled the movie to do well.But not many movies can be lucky & thats been seen clearly in case of 2008.I think UTV marketed Aamir very well & got the act right.I thought YRF was a bit subtle this time with RNBDJ & it has worked in their favour.Ghajini- is marketing at its loudest level- but yes no one associated with the movie is complaining
The name of the game is sustained and persistent marketing. It’s something which should be planned out during the pre-production stage. Aamir’s hairstyle was all over the place before the first shot was canned.And the spin off, he was seen donning it in a couple of Ads. A Bonus?
This was a remake ka remake. The strategy was that the viewer should be familiar with the main character before walking into the cinema hall. Six packs were already in vogue, Aamir took it a couple of Abs further and importantly it was part of his character.
Finally, the product had a high curiosity value. It lasted beyond its expected 4 day shelf life and is still selling. Phir, admit it or not, luck plays an important part.
I understand Ghajini successful marketing but Aamir khan played a considerable role in that. He has an admirable fan following and to boot his different movies status, and one movie a year and getting into the character gets everyone interested in his movies, atleast bring the crowd for the first week of the movie release.
I still fail to understand “Drona” & “Love Story 2050″ fiasco. I dont know what else they would have done, the star power lacked the charisma which Aamir khan has, the movie was awful and pathetic, and no matter the hype it sank without a trace. Look at the news following the release of drona. “SRK son likes my movie”, “We will make Drona 2 although its not a hit”, “Its the first original kids action hero movie”, crappy news coming out of a crappy movie.
Yes luck does play a factor, but so does the goodwill and faith accumulated over the years on which Aamir just cashed and so did SRK and Adi Chopra.
You are all true guys..but before luck comes dressing up your product..plausible merchandising..yes faith is there with brand Aamir and SRK but ultimately if the product is not positioned well..remember Yuva..reasonably good movie..all confused marketing let it down..
Somewhere within all that, the quality of the product is important as well. It is easy to pass something off as a pure marketing triumph, but once the phenomenom continues (as this did or OSO did earlier), one has also got to give it to the makers – they made movies that a reasonably large number of people have liked. Not all critics have panned the movie and there are quite a few who have watched more than once. I liked the movie as well (have seen it only once though).
Ghajini, FWIW, is a good movie – atleast in the eyes of enough people to give it momentum beyond the ezcellent marketing push.
Very good analysis.I always believe that Aamir’s marketing strategy is the best among all of them.And UTV’s marketing worked big time in 2008 in small budget as well as big budget films.Even Singh is King’s marketing was good though the Akshay Kumar factor worked big time.Waiting for Chandni Chowk to China now.
@Ineel: sahi hai yaar… all abt the maal, baal n all that…
@Ani: am waitin for CC2C. it will be the big daddy of all big budget masala flix.
After SRK’s claim that he is the marketing GOD of bollywood, I think Aamir got enough inspiration to prove things otherwise… Indraneel… a good mktg. strategy analysis nevertheless
gud article Indraneel….with Ghajini…aamir is proving that he can match and even take over SRK as king Khan….
but personally i dint like that kind of movie from Aamir…may be i still expect that he is one guy (among star with mass fan following) who doesn’t do a movie just for money….hope he doesn’t repeat it
aamir has tat ‘exclusivity’ factor going for him. so even if a person is not an aamir fan, he will be curious abt it and watch it at least once. he is not overexposed and so his movie gets a gr8 initial. ppl just come to see his enthusiasm, dedication and committment to a movie; all the hardwork tat he puts in. even mangal pandey had a gr8 initial but cud not sustain it bcos the prodcut was not tat good. had the product been a little better, tat wud have made the movie a hit. ghajini was bound to be a hit, i had no doubts abt it
@Gajendra – It is not about the persona above the movie, is it! It is about what should be highlighted..otherwise how does a Shahid Kapoor movie click??
@crazy – you are right..exclusivity works..but then everyone is following the same route..one movie at a time..it is about the product!
Thanks..Anindya, Prashant, Gajendra..
@Indraneel[cmnt #11]: while i do agree tat its abt the product but even publicity matters. wat if we have a gr8 product but no one or not many ppl know abt it[shoestring budget movies]; or wat if we do fantastic publicity but the product is a damp squib[lovestory 2050]. so, it works both ways. we need to strike a balance between the two.
in fact, sometimes when the investment runs really high then they go all out during publicity to get maximum eyeballs, for example OSO where SRK had to literally sell himself but he did not do the same for ‘rab ne…’
We saw this year that with hype and marketing alone, no movie can do really well. If you compare two really comparable films like Kidnap and Ghajini, you see the effect. Even Kidnap had a lot of hype running for it – although it was not marketed that big, but it created quite a buzz in advance. But the content could not hold up to the expectations and after a good opening it really tanked. And I would agree that the culmination of clever marketing and the Aamir-effect could bring Ghajini a grand opening. But in the end, if the product would not please the audience (not the critics!) it would not become a huge success. Btw. the long lasting effect of Ghajini has yet to work. But intense marketing backfires badly if a movie does not fulfill it’s promises. The problem for people around here (I guess) is that they have come to expect of an Aamir film something else than what Ghajini in it’s core is, a mass entertaining masala flick! But I can see nothing wrong in a marketing campaign that is aggressivly, but professionally addressing a really big crowd and promising them an entertaining action drama when it really delivers! And only BO numbers will prove if it did!
Cannot believe a crappy movie like Ghajini is now set to break all kinds of record (they are talking of Rs 200 cr mark)!
Proves that marketing is the real king – the perceived koolness overpowers the intrinsic goodness! As someone said, ‘Jo dikhta hai, woh bikta hai’!
Oh crap …
@ bollywoodplusplus
“Cannot believe a crappy movie like Ghajini is now set to break all kinds of record (they are talking of Rs 200 cr mark)!”
“Proves that marketing is the real king – the perceived koolness overpowers the intrinsic goodness!”
Or maybe your idea of “intrinsic goodness” does not match with that of most of the audience.
I guess a reality check is due!!
Yea, Kic – I know I’m getting into a minority here. With every ‘Om Shanti Om’ that becomes a huge hit or every KANK that breaks the box office record, I get deep and deep into a minority.
Shameless marketing is the mantra these days. I see the TV talent shows are exploited for movie marketing. News portals (Rediff, TOI) are used for creating a mini-site for the infotainment relating to upcoming release.
With all that hype machinery, I think the real winners are the ones that are not marketed, but spreads just by ‘intrinsic goodness’ – like ‘Khosla ka ghosla’, ‘A Wednesday’, ‘Bheja Fry’. These movies have attained cult status, but not a whole lot was spent on promotion. It only picked up by word of mouth.
In recent times, Oye Lucky almost had the chance to become one …. but I guess the Bombay blast jinxed it!
Ghajini is not the first example of this kind of marketing strategy. Shahrukh has been doing this for years. All of his movies are pushed this way. The trend of declaring collections and spreading the news that movie is being liked by everyone or has become a superhit was started by his movies.
All the strategies that now everybody follows were being employed by Shahrukh’s friends in the media for many years. It’s just that others are learning from it now.
Even now Shahrukh has started promoting ‘Billu Barber’ much earlier than required just to ensure that the focus doesn’t remain entirely on Aamir Khan. So, we are getting all sorts of stories about Shahrukh like how three heroines danced for free followed by how Deepika accepted the cheque, interviews of Irrfan Khan praising Shahrukh, stories like how Priyanka and Shahid stayed at Shahrukh’s home on the day of the terror attacks (absoulute sham news) how he and Gauri are similar to Tom Cruise and Ketty ( Earlier it was Sachin Tendulkar and Anjali) and all the usual crap. He plays the superstar in the movie so all the snippets and features portraying him as the ultimate superstar, super popular etc.(Actually this goes on even when there is no release but that’s a different story)
Even ‘ My name is Khan’ is now slowly being slipped into the media space.
If one person is reaping tremendous benefits of this exercise for years, Others are bound to catch up. Aamir and Akshay are now doing publicity on similar lines. Others are doing it but not getting the same results for the lack of similar profile or stature. After all Aamir, Akshya or Salman will always excite people more than Harman or Abhishek or Akshay Khanna.
The quality matters to an extent but shrill media voices constantly hammering ‘this is good’, ‘this is successful’, ‘It has this’ ‘It has that’, ‘X has praised it’ and ‘Y is bowled over by it’ make a person feel that he is missing out on something if he doesn’t watch this film. And more and more ‘bakras’ flock to the theatre.
If the film is not absolute bullshit like ‘Yuvraj’ or ‘Drona’, the strategy almost always works.
PKG, Manjusha, you’re both right.
It’s not surprising that movies like Drona & Love Story 2050 fail despite the marketing hype. You can’t compare such films with films of Aamir, SRK and Akshay Kumar. Firstly, who are the stars in Drona & Love Story 2050? Abhishek & Harman. Speaking for myself (and quite a lot of people I know), I find Abhishek quite boring. And Harman? The less said about him, the better. I hope both prove me wrong by taking us all by surprise in their respective films, Dilli 6 and VICTORY.
More important than these actors, I could tell from the promos of Drona & LS 2050 that they would fail. The subjects of both were such. Frankly, I had the same thoughts when I saw the promos of Ghajini. Maybe that’s because I had seen Memento(expecting a lot) and found the whole movie an exercise in futility. I had also watched the Tamil Ghajini in bits and parts and found it too gory and ‘Tamil Style’ to my liking. Meaning, overdoing everything from action to romance to comedy. Actually, each scene seemed to ’shout’ statements like “Hey, ain’t I a smart director?” or “Check the camera angle, man. Isn’t this groovy?” C’mon a film that shows a man being impaled by a pipe with blood dripping from the tap! How crude can you get and call it creative?
But then, I had not seen the whole movie. And now I know that most people found the Aamir-Asin love story interesting. So I guess the gory bit got balanced out and as a package, the movie worked with the audiences.
Goes to show that if a movie has a well-loved star who’s terribly passionate about it and goes out of his way to promote it, it just has to succeed. PASSION FOR CINEMA, that’s the ticket!