In-film advertising. Haan ya Na?
It’s a B-E-A-U-tiful Saturday evening & alas I am working. Clients are exploiting recession the most & twisting it in all ways possible to squeeze their ad agencies dry. Well, as long as my ‘meter is down’ all is well. Still not prepared to deal with ‘unemployment’ & its aftermaths. Heard & read really tragic stories of young people who lost their jobs & their whole lives have turned upside down. A minute of silence to express our solidarity to all those who have been scarred by recession.
The show must go on, they say… so, I would like to share my thoughts about in-film advertising. Cut to my BPO days where I used to work nights & watch films in the day. On one such day I happened to see RGV’s ‘Company’. Why I like the movie calls for another post altogether, but for now, I will stick to the subject. Tata Safari. I don’t know if RGV was paid to use it, but the use of Safari in the movie got me sold out. He exploited the Tata Safari in his film Road as well. Almost just like he captures his other charecters, Safari had become a charecter in those films. My first car has to be a Tata Safari. Damn you RGV. ;-)
Another brand that made its way into my psyche via films is Pepsi. Now I am a SRK fan (trying bloody hard to understate) & when I saw Dil To Pagal Hai, the way YRF smartly inserted the product into the film… especially in a scene where SRK wakes up & gargles with Pepsi – I got hooked. So it’s Pepsi for me. And yes, I will get a Pepsi vending machine for my home. For sure. Though I was of an impressionable age then, the cool-quotient of Pepsi still remains. A pat in the back to the guys who are keeping the brand Pepsi still as cool as it was back then when it was first launched.
Thanks to SRK’s uber cool avatar in Don, Louis Philippe made a grand entry to my life. Though I don’t wear ‘em as much, but I remember going from LP store to store asking for the ‘Don Collection’ only to be told that ’stock illa saar’. Well, I did manage to get 2 shirts in a freak incident where my then ‘Simran’ gifted it to me as a surprise. Hey sweety, if you are reading this, thanks for that oye!
I guess it will be better if I talk of some of my non-SRK brand affiliations, as I can see the daggers being drawn. LOL. OK, I beg your pardon just one more. Tommy Hilfiger. Circa Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai. I still remember the mad frenzy when 97.43% of Indore’s impressionable youth was wearing faux Tommy Hilfiger skin tight tees. And yes, I am guilty too! LOL. Nobody knew what or who the eff was Tommy, but we all wore it with pride. In this same paragraph, let me sneak in Tag Heur too. ;-). It’s on my wishlist. The Don connection.
How can I forget Sathiya. Bajaj Avenger. Goddamnit. Even the actual ads of the bike weren’t as effective in creating a recall value, as Sathiya did. The ‘amir baap ki bigdi aulaads’ & ‘gareeb baap ki mehnati aulaads’ who I knew had made a beeline for the bike. Some are still paying the EMIs of the outrageously priced monster bike. Some settled for the lesser cousin Yamaha Enticer. Me wants Harley Davidson, thanks to Sanju Baba in Khoobsurat & many other films that followed… Kaante, Musafir etc.
And then there was Bunty Aur Babli. Maruti Swift made its Indian debut with the release of the film. Rumour has it that Maruti had delayed the launch of this new model to time it with the release of the film. It was the first time a Maruti model featured in Bollywood film as part of a marketing strategy & boy it worked & how! It found its target without beating around the bush. Guys in the 30s who were missing their 20s found the secret of ageing backwards. Too swiftly!
Well, now I leave for the studio. Some patch-work needs to be done on the corporate film that I had shot. The client needs some final changes for the nth time. $^$##%*&$#@. Anyways, to conclude, I have, over the years, being in ads & being a filmi keeda, realized that the more the in-film brand placement is incidental, the more it works. You try & force it in, it fizzles. I am waiting to hear your stories of how in-film brand placement worked / didn’t work for you. This will help all us filmi aspirants to know where to draw the line. However thin it may be. Like always, stay filmi.
Tags: Bajaj Avenger, Company, don, EMI, filmi, Harley Davidson, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Louis Philippe, Maruti Swift, Pepsi, Raj, Recession, rgv, Road, Sanjay Dutt, Simran, SRK, Tag Heur, Tata Safari, Tommy Hilfiger, vivek Oberoi, Yamaha Enticer, YRF
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
Magik bhai… magikal, as always…
well, the worst product placement award must go to Mission Istanbul: Dar Ke Aage Jeet Hai. close second, IMO, wud b the Yaadein product placements. cant remember much except that Lays chips being eaten by Kareena n sisters in one scene.
what worked partially was van Heusen in Ghajini, what dint work AT ALL was Motorola in Dilli 6.
more as it comes to mind.
@ Magik- in film advertising works if used moderately & with great effect.For me the worst case is that of Yaadein- not only Lays chips, it had Hero cycles and Pass Pass Mouth refreshner & lots more crap.One of the better examples of smart in film advertising probably is ( SRK again ) using Santro cars in a RNBDJ or even Chalte Chalte- its not in the face, but it gets you the point.
BTW I have a different story from my side-
I like SRK & Amitabh Bachchan- both endorse Pepsi, but I dont like Pepsi & prefer Thums Up/Coke any day
@ Jha saab: glad u liked the post. u r spot on abt mission instanbulls***. LOL. I am sure in a while Krish while strike u too!
@ Sethu: LOL. bro, i guess its time i let the cat outta the bag. i prefer thums up with my rum. LOL. I wanted to mention Rab ne, but i didnt want to be ripped apart for overdoing the SRK bit.
Product Placements are only viable, if the movie makes money, and for the movie to make money it should be good and for the movie to be good it should not be irrational and for a movie to be logical it should not include a lot of product placements.
So it is in the interest of both film makers and corporates alike that product placements, co-branding excercises are carefully executed, because like Ghai, who went after money, will end up delivering a dud of a movie..
Write the script credibly first, then decide which elements can be utilized to place the product in.
Classic Examples
1) FedEx in Castaway
2) New York Herald Tribune…(first lines of a bout de souffle)
Worst Cases
1) Head and Shoulders, Evolution –it was a horrible movie alright,but the movies climax was planned to suit the product..
2) iPod in Blade Trinity- it is horrendous..
The worst of the lot is ‘Virrudh’, the amitabh – John wala movie, it had all the brans endorsed by AB and few others, they even play the nerolac wala tune in the movie.
And yeah Yaadein, Mission Istanbul was equally bad.
David lynch’s opinion of product placement (succinct and hilarious) – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4wh_mc8hRE
Lynch has done advertisements (notably some awesome Playstation Ads), so he’s certainly not anti-corporate or something, just against having it in feature films.
Kkrish reminded me of Koi mil gaya
I think it had superb placement of Bournvita.
Viruddh was terrible in its placement of ads…remember the Western Union plug?! Eeeks!
I thought Vodafone in ‘Aamir’ was plugged in smartly. Not sure if it was paid for but the red banner made an appearance in quite a few scenes. And considering the color ‘red’ was prominent in the movie, it seemed to somehow make good cinematic sense as well…
My all time best ever shall be The Sony Ericcson phone with Bond..what features and what use incorporated into the script!!!
if we observe, most of the times the brand tat a particular star endorses just creeps into the movie too. like bigB and icici bank in baghban.
in fact, baghban also had ‘ford’ product, but the ford team did not check the script which resulted in the brand being shown in bad-light wrt customer service…the way bigB gets pushed out of the showroom :(
also, film is one of the best ways to reach out to audience. when brands air their ads in tv channels, they are not guaranteed that the program will be watched. tats why cricket/ipl is a big way to push ad, coz ppl will watch that for sure.
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similarly, in movies like ‘taal’ where subhash ghai is at the helm of it, then coke will definitely eb watched by the entire movie going audience.
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tat worked in taal, but ghai went OTT in yaadein
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ads in movies is here to stay. kya karen … promotional atyachar!
Worst for me was the Motorola in Delhi 6. Not only did Abhishek seem to have it permanently glued to his palm – as if it truly could double for a quality camera! – but the dialogue at the end got truly stupid.
“Just call her”?
In THAT context?
When the dialogue gets moronic just to squeeze in another mention/shot of the product, that’s when product placement has failed.
One of my favorite scenes for In-film advertising is in the Movie “Chak De India”. The scene when SRK shows up for the interview has probably the best product placement for Bisleri, the Bisleri bottles are ubiquitous on the table, but it looks perfectly normal because this is how corporate tables look.
hey magik, great post man. am an srk fan too! but yes, the coke guys should pay anurag kashyap for introducing the concept of ‘coke with vodka’. its a rage among the hep party going crowd. especially the girls. and yes, i was sold out to bajaj avenger with saathiya. dude the monster is worth evey cent that i… ok, my dad paid for! ;-)
@ Ram V: spot on with ur examples.
@ KVJ: thanks for the link.
@ AgentZac: true.
@ D&C: i agree wid u on amir & vodafone connection
@ I’neel da: yes! yes!! yes!!!
@ crazyrals: promosanal atyachar it is!
@ turquoise: i had guessed that in the promos itself… D6 just too much!
@ Grim: i guess it was incidental.
@ Abhi Shake: thanks for pointing out the dev.d-coke connection.
Nice article…
The first movie which i saw with a infilm product placement was Taal (coke peene se pyaar badhta hai)…and now the term is no longer a difficult defination for movies. Infact people are writing scripts keeping a product placement in mind. And because I am in the ad industry, and worked for similar projects, let me just tell you how it happens.
There are agencise / companies (Entertainment companies) who work only for Infilm promotions. The creative team are in touch with the production houses / writers. Once the script is in process, they approach clients with the script synopsis and tell them how they can place their products in the film (which may or may not require some tweeking of the script). If the client is agreed on the concept, they place the product in the film.
Some of the infilm brands are –
Bournvita and Lays in Krissh, Domino’s in Phir Hera Pheri, Archies in Pyaare Mohan, Reebok in Viruddh, Zoom Tv in Waqt, Frankfinn in Dil Maange More and welcome, ICICI (Jeete Raho) in Cheene Kum and Baghbaan, Tide in Chup Chup ke etc etc. The list is endless as now you can see everybody is opting for this medium for its high recall and celebrity association.
And SRK is undoubted king in this genere of marketing (though aamir says he is good in PR and poor in marketing). He gets the maximum brands (which he endorses) in his movies. Main hoon naa is the classic example of infilm placements with Reebok, Cafe Coffee Day, Frito Lays, Levis and LML strategically interwoven into the screenplay. Again everybody using Motorola cell phone in DON and SRK promoting TAG Heuer, i10 in RNBDJ, McDonalds, Puma, Bisleri and UltraTech Cement in Chak De etc etc. Again the SRK list is endless.
All said and done SRK Rocks here as well. In last year IPL, KKR made the maximum profit. SRK was able to rope in Nokia, Bellmonte, Videocon etc etc for sponsoring the KKR Team.
Cheers !!
~Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale
@Magik – And you don waoory abt over doing SRK bit…i have done it for you. Hope tere dil ke armaan phoot phoot ke bahar aa gaye honge…and in next 10 min u vil reply me with a BIIIIIGGG thanks. (Don do it via SMS…be courteous enough to say it here)
@ Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale: thanks for the wonderful insights that u have provided. I am surprised that the marketing process begins at scripting stage itself. i guess in such cases the chances of the alliance failing is high. i strongly feel so… yes bro SRK RULES!
@ Ashu: eagerly awaiting ur next ‘come back’ on PFC!
@magik – wonderful insights that i have provided. You are thanking “ME” for the insights “YOU” have provided. Sounds little strange, but its ok.
And buddy, i have been trying my luck to get into movie marketing for a long time. And during my ragging (So called interviews) i came across this fact that marketing process begins at scripting stage itself. And i disagree that chances of failing is high in such alliances. Rather its the other way round.
When a brand manager knows the synopsis (mind you i said that the creative shares the synopsis and not the script with the brand managers), he will be in a better position to decide on weather to place his product in the movie or not or if the movie really worth placing his product.
Later on the brand run contests around the film with a chance to meet their favourite star (Godrej Security systems in Tasveer 8 X 10 is running a contest, purchase a Godrej security product and chill with Akki)
And all this is just the begining of the process…once the deal is done, in some of the cases, the brand managers are involved in the production process as well. They are present during the shoot, edit and post production to check if the product is placed in the right manner.
Also some minor changes are done in the script to give the product a meaningful placement. For instance Ultratech in Chak De. The story may have moved without the ultratech sponsoring the Indian Women hockey team, but they created a situation wherein they are needing a sponsor, and this is how UltraTech came in.
In the film, UltraTech Cement is the official sponsor of the Indian women’s hockey team, which is coached by a character portrayed by Shah Rukh Khan. The dynamic hockey players, who wear the UltraTech Cement branded official gear, defy all odds and beat the top international teams to be crowned as the world champions. Even though there is no product relevance or synergy, the in-film placement initiative has been conducted quite uniquely without a single reference to the brand in the film and without being too obvious or blatant or in-the-face.
source – http://www.indiaprwire.com/pressrelease/advertising/200708224176.htm.
Cheers !!
Ashu Bhai MAPRM wale
hmmm… learning my lessons. thanks ashu!
Oye, SRK was hooted out of Pepsi, so y didnt u chuck it then…:)Chuck it, chuck it.
And who can forget the baap of all in-film advertising, Yaadien. It takes the whole bakery.:)
Some gyan there…thnx and thnx to Ashu as well. Whatta Gyan
Oye Vee! i will chuck you outta da blogosphere. Hehe. You spelt Yaadein as Yaadien. its a cult fillum. Sorry bol bhe*&%$*. LOL.
If anyone has “Family” then its u will never forget the scene where Amitabh gifts his grand son a pack of Parle-G and says “Yeh aapka favorite Biscuit” LOL .. the crowd in the theatre had a good laugh… if u have noticed Krish Rekha using Tide to wash clothes, was pretty clear the way she was showing the brand name towards the camera :D
@ Scorpion: eheheh. totally agree! that tide wala scene makes me squirm each time i see!
cool write-up, magik.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaSLTb7njVE
here, PR professors always go back to the Reese’s Pieces-ET product placement example. btw, check this out
thanx for the link amanda!
1. Archies in Waqt.
2. Reebok in Victory(out of nowhere sponsorin the Indian cricket team).
3. Similarly, Provogue in Chain Khulli Ki Main Khulli.
4. One of the most recent, but at the same time, the worst example, Godrej Security Solutions in Tasveer 8 x 10.
@ Sahil: thanks for your imputs buddy!