The mangal of marketing

FREEZE FRAME

Mangal Pandey may or may not have instigated the actual uprising in 1857 which led to the First War of Independence, but Aamir Khan and Bobby Bedi have demonstrated very clearly that hype and hoopla are going to play an important part in the success of an Indian film in times to come.

In the last 12 months, films like Veer Zaara, Hum Tum, Bunty Aur Babli, Black, Parineeta, Paheli and Sarkar have all gone that extra mile to pull audiences in the first few days of release.

This column has been prescient, saying that aggressive marketing and a saturation release was the only way forward for Bollywood. Sure enough, for two weeks before The Rising's launch, there was a concerted media blitz, with Aamir Khan and Mangal Pandey omnipresent on TV channels, newspapers, websites, mobile phones and other media.

This is the beginning of a new, resurgent movie business: forward-looking, organised and in tune with other businesses. The problem is that only 10 per cent of producers, distributors and exhibitors are equipped to handle the altered pattern of trade.

Another 10 per cent are bravely trying to learn the new rules of the game, while 80 per cent are just caught in a whirlpool of change and can do little more than shout for help as they get swallowed into the vortex of obsolescence. A large part of this newfound energy "" and revenue "" has come from overseas but the rise of multiplexes in urban India is also fuelling the unprecedented growth.

The proliferation of media vehicles, especially TV news channels and newspapers, is helping to generate pre- and post-release hype for movies. In a peculiarly symbiotic manner, films and the news media are sustaining each other in the battle of the eyeballs.

A few days before the release of a major film, it is de rigueur for major film stars and directors to pop up on virtually every news channel. Some have special tie-ups with music channels and even kids channels. Newspapers and websites are not far behind. Now, mobile phone companies and FM radio stations are also getting into the act.

While producers like Yash and Adi Chopra, UTV, Ram Gopal Varma, Karan Johar, Mahesh and Mukesh Bhatt, Pritish Nandy, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Sajid Nadiadwala and Bobby Bedi are some of the smart ones who have understood the new dynamics, others are simply out of their depth.

There is one more problem: even if one is able to create the necessary hype through promotions and alliances, it is difficult to translate that into revenues all the time. Most distributors and exhibitors are still old fashioned and not keen to participate in the new value chain.

Another much-lamented malaise is that for an industry of its size, Bollywood has just five rag-tag trade magazines and a couple of websites whose half-baked information parades around the media circus pronouncing judgement on films.

Their assessment is based on yardsticks which do not matter and, very often, are inaccurate. Sadly, the mainline print and electronic media take their cues from these so-called experts and, hence, often wrongly determine the fate of films "" even on the day of release.

(The author is chairman of Reliance Entertainment and the views expressed are his own)