The year 1999 was a hallmark in Bollywood.
It saw Subhash Ghai's 'Taal' become the first
ever Bollywood film to be insured against
losses after the insurance company in question
found that its financing and production
schedule were sufficiently well-documented.
Though it was a milestone of sorts, the Indian
film industry was still in a very raw and rather
disorganized state of affairs.
"Movies per se - over the last 100 years -
have pretty much been run where a producercum-
director, produces and directs an entire
movie. He hardly let anyone watch it, and
then pre-sold it to distributors - who haven't a
clue about the movie, because they hadn't yet
been allowed to watch it. So, in essence, after
spending 5 years of his life making a movie,
the filmmaker would just go and leave it to
the discretion of those people for the last fifteen
days pre-release. It's the most horrific
thing anyone can do for a movie", says
Ronnie Screwvala, CEO, UTV Software
Communications Ltd.
He continues, "The distributor didn't have a
clue, because he hadn't seen the product; the
director was insecure to show him the product
because he thought that if he did, and the
distributor didn't like it, he wouldn't pick up
the movie. As a result, because everything
was so hush-hush, there was no room to even
give a thought to the marketing of the movie,
let alone marketing-innovations."
The distributor was of the belief (and rightly
so) that as a 'distributor', his job was merely
to place prints in theatres; and that was just
what he did. His job was not to get people to
come to the theatres. So whose job was it to
get people to come watch the film in the
movie halls? "The producer", explains
Screwvala, "would be the only one who had
watched the film, and it was left up to him to
decide on the amount of posters printed, and
television and print ad space that was bought
to promote it. There was absolutely zero innovation."
The other thing - which taking today's state
of affairs, seems like sacrilege - was that there
was never any marketing budget set aside for
a film. "When people worked out the cost of
production, they'd start with working on the
break-even of the movie, based only on the
cost of production.
This is absurd, because it's
imperitive to understand that if your cost of
production is such-and-such amount, you
have to add on a marketing amount before
you get out there. It's like Levers saying 'Lux is
going to cost me this, but I've got to add the
marketing component', without working or
fitting in the cost of that component before
hand. No one can deny that marketing is a
very important quotient in launching any sort
of product or service", explains Screwvala.
"There isn't an integrated system in
Bollywood; it is not a 'studio model'. In a studio
model, the producer-director is also the
distributor. When you have that joint ownership
and are the last man standing, then you
simply have to take control. Distribution as a
business is a business of attracting people to
come and watch the movie. Today, 20th
Century Fox and Sony Columbia are not creative
studios anymore; they are actually distribution
behemoths. If you ask them, they'll
define themselves as having the best distribution
pipelines. Distribution to them means
very creative marketing, great placement in
distribution and superb placement post its
theatre release - which includes where the
DVDs are sold, television syndication deals
and so on and so forth. That hasn't really happened
here yet, which is why you need to allo-
cate a budget", says Screwvala.
The producer-director's ideas of 'marketing'
clearly weren't working, the distributor just
distributed, and from the conception of the
film, there were never any funds allotted to
the marketing. So, where did the marketing
lie? It was clearly in no-man's-land.
But that was then. In recent times (read: the
last few years), the Indian film industry has
wizened up to the fact that without the appropriate
marketing, even a film with a Milky
Way cast can be a financial disaster. In today's
world of film marketing, just posters, promotional
spots on television, print ads and billboard
announcements are passé. It is, in fact,
the smallest piece of the marketing agenda.
Many film producers - including Screwvala -
believe that unless you allocate nothing less
than 20 percent of your cost of production for
marketing, the movie industry is not going to
grow. "It's a 4,500-crore industry and everyone
keeps bragging about it, but the fact is that it
has remained a 4,500-crore industry for the
last ten years. Television started in 1992, and
it's become a 16,000-crore industry from zero.
The only one key fallacy is marketing", he
says.
AS far back as 1975, a film-maker who
broached the subject of royalty from Pidilite
for mentioning Fevicol in his film was at a loss
for words when Pidilite asked him why the
roles could not be reversed because the company
felt their brand was much bigger than
the film. Today however, the tables have
turned, and companies are forking out huge
amounts of cash for their brands to associate
with films for pre and post-release publicity.
When brands get into product associations
with films, one of the first things they want is
to have their products visible in-film. But
film-makers are only too well aware that audiences
are averse to this sort of gimmick; with
'You've Got Mail' and 'The Fast and The
Furious' being dubbed by critics as two-hour
long commercials for AOL and Mini Cooper
respectively, they learnt their lesson.
Brand association with films is nothing new
in the West, but for India it is new territory
and few have managed to pull off with seamless
ease and finesse. Arguably, the best example
that comes to mind is the much talked
about recent hit, 'Rang De Basanti'.
