Sunday, March 7, 2010

Masters of Marketing

World has become really competitive these days and unless you market yourself you are never going to succeed. Marketing is an art and marketers follow the key message in Gita ‘end results are important and not the ways to reach them’. Nowadays marketing tactics and advertisements are extremely complicated. Unique and innovative ways of marketing were adopted to generate interest for their products/services.

The marketing department of the movie, “”My name is Khan” has definitely succeeded in generating interest in public through a series of cleverly planned ‘real incidents‘ with the back up of our electronic media. The series was kick started by SRK getting ‘detained’ at an American airport and questioned for an hour or two. Then there was another rumour that SRK’s naked scanned images were taken at the airport and those pics were leaked out to public. SRK has to face all these brutalities because his last name - ‘Khan’. News channels broadcasted these as breaking news! We live in a multi lingual, multi religious country which has innumerable social problems which requires immediate attention. However, this is an era of ‘Paid news’ and the concealed ad campaign of SRK’s movie was given preference. Not surprising at all, as the news channels have stooped down to mere advertisement medium for politicians and bollywood.

The massive ad campaign was to promote 2 parties. One is MNIK the movie and the other is Shiv sena, who is desperately trying to regain its lost fame and loosing their ground to another set of goons – the MNS. SRK and Shiv sena clashed through the media and the following words of exchange and public protest ensured to meet the two objectives of the whole campaign.

1) To brand SRK as a powerful person who stood by his principles and thereby promote his movie MNIK, which basically highlights the racial profiling by west.

2) To show the strength of Sena and to show the world that they still have supporters at the root level who can execute Babasaheb’s orders and thereby proving that no security can stop the sena.

We have enough idiots in our country who wasted their precious time watching the WWF match between SRK and Shiv sena. Shiv sena lived up to their name - what more can one expect from the followers of ‘God of destruction’. SRK managed to create curiosity in public and managed to prevent a huge financial burden for his producer who unfortunately financed a ‘hindi forest gump’, where SRK overacted throughout the movie.

The number of film stars in Twitter and blogs has been on the rise, the major objective is to market their new releases and to get public visibility through the medium. The rise of controversies just before and after the release is also very common nowadays. Similar to SRK – Sena drama, the makers of 3 idiots and Chetan Bhagat fought in public. 3 idiots went on to become a huge hit and the sale of Chetan’s book went up by a significant percentage. Classic example of a win-win situation. No points for guessing the real idiots !!!


5 comments:

scorpiogenius said...

Hey, back with a bang! Your hibernation from blogosphere is a bit too long, I feel :)

Well, 3 Idiots- Chetan Bhagat was a win-win situation, but could we say the same about MNIK now? The last time I heard the film was losing in many centers but doing well abroad. Anyway, some Sena morons got the idea, thats the crux of the tale. :)

Ajith said...

@scorp- :) I ll try to put at least one post per month.

MNIK was houseful for the first week. but even such a 'creative' campaign could not save the producer as the movie was totally fake right from the start till the end. moral of the story - stick to the basis, make gud movies. use the creative energy in movies and not in 'post production' gimmicks!

Happy Kitten said...

And where have you been?

Scorpio: I think no one would have put up with SRK's acting if it had not generated all this controversy.. and now I hear it has at least not lost all the money and is indeed making more... thanks to the brilliant marketing as Ajit said..

and I shall be happy if this same method is used for any other valid problems that our nation is facing... will the ordinary folks, our business men, the media show the same unity?

and if it can be done then this country will be saved...

Ajith said...

@HK - Shaadi ke side effect - too many commitments in life and very little free time to blog :)

I am not sure whether indians can work in unity, but we are definitely innovative and creative :)

Happy Kitten said...

Ajith: so no more a lonely soul :)

Wish you both a very happy and long married life... and may we get to read you more...