What links popular Indian director Rajkumar Hirani and American cinema mystic Terrence Malick?
Not much. But the marketing strategy for Hirani’s PK has taken the filmmaker behind the Munnabhai movies and 3 Idiots into Malick territory. Hirani has been as secretive about his December 19 release as Malick, who famously keeps interviewers in the dark about his movies.
PK has been the focus of eager discussion since last year, when news broke that Hirani, Khan and Hirani’s long-time producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra were teaming up to make yet another social satire. Yet, just days before its release on over 5,000 screens in India and abroad, journalists and audiences have been kept guessing about PK’s storyline. What is Khan’s character trying to say through his unblinking stare? Is he an alien, as has been speculated, who has arrived in India to laugh at its ridiculous ways? Is he from the future, or the past? What is his relationship with co-star Anushka Sharma?
If there is one word to describe PK’s pre-release publicity, it is “intrigue”, said Sameer Rao, Chief Executive officer of Vinod Chopra Films Private Limited, which has produced the movie along with Rajkumar Hirani Films. Apart from a handful of movie stills that have been given to selected media outlets, the publicity campaign has very few arrows in its quiver ‒ online teasers focusing on the dialogue, one video trailer, citywide tours, and zero appearances on television shows.
Feeding the buzz
“The idea was to create excitement without doing stuff that would take away from the film,” Rao explained. “We started in August with the first poster.” It showed a nude Khan concealing his manhood with a cassette player. “Aamir, Raju [Rajkumar] and Vinod decided that because of the character’s quirkiness, we would do a poster campaign that gave a glimpse into the various characters,” Rao added. “We never came out with a full-length trailer until recently, and we didn’t have too many brand associations unless they fit the film’s image. We haven’t tied up with any television shows because we’re not quite sure whether this fits the film. It’s a hypothesis, and we have to wait and see if it works.”
There’s another, commerce-induced reason behind PK’s secretiveness. The movie is the solo release on December 19, and has the next two weeks to itself, with only minor competition from the Hollywood movie Night at the Museum 3 and Anurag Kashyap’s thriller Ugly the following week. The next major Hindi release is Tevar on January 9.
“We have a long window, and in any case, Raju’s films are not one-week wonders,” Rao said. “Some people will watch the film in the first week, and we will also look for people who missed the first weekend and repeated audiences. We will continue to promote the music and the comedy after the release.”
Movie promotion is an art in itself. Any movie with a halfway respectable budget is only as good as its pre-release publicity campaign. The effort is to create that abstract state called buzz, which can be experienced and only partially measured. Release dates and first-look posters are announced months in advance, tunes from the soundtrack make their way to television, radio and video-sharing sites, interviews are lined up, paid media is galvanised into action, Twitter and Facebook accounts are created, promotional appearances planned across high-ranking television shows and tie-ups with consumer products are put into place.
The tell and show business
Some of the year’s important releases were preceded by high-profile advance activities. Yash Raj Films, which has previously been chary about aggressively marketing its titles, sent Aditya Roy Kapur and Parineeti Chopra, the young leads of Daawat-e-Ishq, on a culinary themed tour of the country since the movie features food in a major way. For his dance-themed production Happy New Year, Shah Rukh Khan and the movie’s cast went on a multi-city tour of the US. Trailers for Sriram Raghavan’s Badlapur, a vendetta drama that opens only February 20, are already out. Its lead actor, Varun Dhawan, recently appeared on Bigg Boss, the reality show on Colours hosted by Salman Khan.
The best approach is one that complements a movie’s theme, said Vikram Malhotra, one of the producers of the upcoming action thriller Baby. Starring Akshay Kumar and directed by Neeraj Pandey, Baby opens only on January 23, but teasers and promotional spots hit the internet in September.
One of Baby’s disadvantages is that it has a couple of songs that will play only in the background rather than be lip-synced. The promotions focus on other aspects of the movie. The trailers are "making of" videos that detail the production process. “Baby’s marketing is aligned to the nature of the content,” Malhotra said. “It’s a non-nonsense thriller and therefore the positioning is also non-nonsense. Because we are confident of the content, we are building up value for the film and talk about its story. The focus is on the director and the star.”
Most of this activity is playing out through digital media, the new frontier of discovery for Bollywood. Digital media allows filmmakers to reach younger and more diverse audiences for much less money. “The spend on conventional media has been negligible,” Malhotra said. “We are giving you the real reasons why you should be watching the film.”
But Baby’s cast won’t appear on Bigg Boss, however popular the reality show might be, Malhotra declared. “The audience has seen through fake integrations,” he said. “This stuff exists only inside our heads. We think we are getting additional audience visibility, but it only creates nuisance value.”
Producers with aces up their sleeve – a competition-free release date or the stellar Hirani-Aamir Khan combination in the case of PK, a curiosity-inducing premise and a respected director in Baby – might just be emboldened enough to attempt new ways to reach audiences. The others can always fall back on addressing Bigg Boss’s colourful participants or chortling at Kapil Sharma’s jokes on Comedy Nights with Kapil.
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Not much. But the marketing strategy for Hirani’s PK has taken the filmmaker behind the Munnabhai movies and 3 Idiots into Malick territory. Hirani has been as secretive about his December 19 release as Malick, who famously keeps interviewers in the dark about his movies.
PK has been the focus of eager discussion since last year, when news broke that Hirani, Khan and Hirani’s long-time producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra were teaming up to make yet another social satire. Yet, just days before its release on over 5,000 screens in India and abroad, journalists and audiences have been kept guessing about PK’s storyline. What is Khan’s character trying to say through his unblinking stare? Is he an alien, as has been speculated, who has arrived in India to laugh at its ridiculous ways? Is he from the future, or the past? What is his relationship with co-star Anushka Sharma?
If there is one word to describe PK’s pre-release publicity, it is “intrigue”, said Sameer Rao, Chief Executive officer of Vinod Chopra Films Private Limited, which has produced the movie along with Rajkumar Hirani Films. Apart from a handful of movie stills that have been given to selected media outlets, the publicity campaign has very few arrows in its quiver ‒ online teasers focusing on the dialogue, one video trailer, citywide tours, and zero appearances on television shows.
Feeding the buzz
“The idea was to create excitement without doing stuff that would take away from the film,” Rao explained. “We started in August with the first poster.” It showed a nude Khan concealing his manhood with a cassette player. “Aamir, Raju [Rajkumar] and Vinod decided that because of the character’s quirkiness, we would do a poster campaign that gave a glimpse into the various characters,” Rao added. “We never came out with a full-length trailer until recently, and we didn’t have too many brand associations unless they fit the film’s image. We haven’t tied up with any television shows because we’re not quite sure whether this fits the film. It’s a hypothesis, and we have to wait and see if it works.”
There’s another, commerce-induced reason behind PK’s secretiveness. The movie is the solo release on December 19, and has the next two weeks to itself, with only minor competition from the Hollywood movie Night at the Museum 3 and Anurag Kashyap’s thriller Ugly the following week. The next major Hindi release is Tevar on January 9.
“We have a long window, and in any case, Raju’s films are not one-week wonders,” Rao said. “Some people will watch the film in the first week, and we will also look for people who missed the first weekend and repeated audiences. We will continue to promote the music and the comedy after the release.”
Movie promotion is an art in itself. Any movie with a halfway respectable budget is only as good as its pre-release publicity campaign. The effort is to create that abstract state called buzz, which can be experienced and only partially measured. Release dates and first-look posters are announced months in advance, tunes from the soundtrack make their way to television, radio and video-sharing sites, interviews are lined up, paid media is galvanised into action, Twitter and Facebook accounts are created, promotional appearances planned across high-ranking television shows and tie-ups with consumer products are put into place.
The tell and show business
Some of the year’s important releases were preceded by high-profile advance activities. Yash Raj Films, which has previously been chary about aggressively marketing its titles, sent Aditya Roy Kapur and Parineeti Chopra, the young leads of Daawat-e-Ishq, on a culinary themed tour of the country since the movie features food in a major way. For his dance-themed production Happy New Year, Shah Rukh Khan and the movie’s cast went on a multi-city tour of the US. Trailers for Sriram Raghavan’s Badlapur, a vendetta drama that opens only February 20, are already out. Its lead actor, Varun Dhawan, recently appeared on Bigg Boss, the reality show on Colours hosted by Salman Khan.
The best approach is one that complements a movie’s theme, said Vikram Malhotra, one of the producers of the upcoming action thriller Baby. Starring Akshay Kumar and directed by Neeraj Pandey, Baby opens only on January 23, but teasers and promotional spots hit the internet in September.
One of Baby’s disadvantages is that it has a couple of songs that will play only in the background rather than be lip-synced. The promotions focus on other aspects of the movie. The trailers are "making of" videos that detail the production process. “Baby’s marketing is aligned to the nature of the content,” Malhotra said. “It’s a non-nonsense thriller and therefore the positioning is also non-nonsense. Because we are confident of the content, we are building up value for the film and talk about its story. The focus is on the director and the star.”
Most of this activity is playing out through digital media, the new frontier of discovery for Bollywood. Digital media allows filmmakers to reach younger and more diverse audiences for much less money. “The spend on conventional media has been negligible,” Malhotra said. “We are giving you the real reasons why you should be watching the film.”
But Baby’s cast won’t appear on Bigg Boss, however popular the reality show might be, Malhotra declared. “The audience has seen through fake integrations,” he said. “This stuff exists only inside our heads. We think we are getting additional audience visibility, but it only creates nuisance value.”
Producers with aces up their sleeve – a competition-free release date or the stellar Hirani-Aamir Khan combination in the case of PK, a curiosity-inducing premise and a respected director in Baby – might just be emboldened enough to attempt new ways to reach audiences. The others can always fall back on addressing Bigg Boss’s colourful participants or chortling at Kapil Sharma’s jokes on Comedy Nights with Kapil.
