Marketing Ganga

Author: Shabbir Chunawalla

  • Mamta Kulkarni, Former Hindi Film Actress

    A very popular Hindi film actress Mamta Kulkarni now manages a real estate and hotel business in Dubai. She has turned spiritual and written a book called Autobiography of a Yogini. The link to her blog is http://officialmamtakulkarni.tumblr.com/post/5535979207/autobiography-of-an-yogini-by-a-bollywood-celebrity

  • Front Row in a Fashion Show

    The front row in a fashion show has the coveted seats.The important guests expect to be seated appropriately. To some, it is a sign of arrival. These seats allow you to see the details. These are occupied by powerful editors, celebrities, diplomats and political persons. There are fashion industry magnates too. Some have the policy of seating the biggest buyers there, taking precedence over all others. In some shows, socialites who never buy the clothes occupy the front seats. These could be replaced by buyers and media people. The front row seats are limited. These should not be linked to the status. No one takes away your status wherever you are seated.

  • Trailers for Promotion of Movies

    In order to promote movies, trailers are made lasting 2-3 minutes for theatrical release and 10-30 seconds for television. Generally, there are 1 or 2 theatrical trailers and 8-10 TV promos. The TV promos consist of song promos and dialogue promos. Trailers are loaded on YouTube, and are released simultaneously with the theatrical release. They may get millions of views online. To begin with trailers in the 1990s and early 2000s were cut by the filmmakers themselves. Today a trailer is a complete advertising package which is cut by a specialist. A film editor cannot do this specialist job. There are specialist agencies to cut trailers. The trailers create a sense of expectation from the film and drive the audience to the theatre. The potential audience has to get the feel of the film in 2 minutes. Slick and crisp editing is a pre-requisite for a successful trailer. Film-makers use between Rs.3 and Rs.25 lac on trailers and promos. Trailer makers earn a profit margin of 25-30 per cent.

    Work on trailers start six to eight months before the release of the film. A good trailer must be accurate too. If there is disconnect between the trailer and the film, the film may flop.The history of trailer making is as old as 100 years. Hollywood studios in 1913 started screening films then. In India, Prime Focus and Trigger Happy are the two major players in trailer cutting.

  • Marketplace Model of E-commerce

    According to Kishor Biyani, any retailer can be a marketplace and any marketplace is also retailer. E-commerce retailers advance the argument of just being the marketplace from which the consumers buy, but the goods are supplied by a host of vendors from their inventories. Here it should be made clear that for most supplies the inventories of even virtual retailers are held in the warehouses of the virtual retailers. The only difference is the accounting treatment of the inventories.

    • Some account this inventory on their balance sheet.
    • Other account for it in their suppliers’ balance sheet, irrespective of the physical location of the inventory.

    However, there are brick-and-mortar stores who also do not account for the inventory on their books. That wipes out the artificially created difference between the virtual and brick-and-mortar retailers. Therefore, the demand for the physical retailers is to have one common policy of overseas investment in multi-brand retail. At present online retailors are violating the existing FDI policy in letter and spirit. Marketplace model is just another name for smart accounting.

  • Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC)

    The communication package consists of advertising, sales promotion, publicity and public relations. Don Schultz, Stan Tonnenbaum and Robert Lauterborn put forward the Integrated Marketing Communication model in a book titled Integrated Marketing Communication : Pulling It Together and Making It Work in 1997. It was a strategic problem-solving approach, and a new way of thinking. Marketing communication must have a unified approach to make it accountable for achieving the business objectives. The idea was soon interpreted as communication consistency, e.g. PR must be in sync with advertising. IMC supports a common idea of communication across all communication media. Grey calls it synchronized marketing. A core brand idea is extended across the media. In an agency, each division has its own business goals. They should emphasise the overall communication package. A single agency may not provide the whole communication package. The problem is that of the lead. Who will be the integrator ? If there is no proper integration, who will be blamed ? Advertisers tend to place the blame at the door of the agencies. However, the ultimate responsibility is that of the advertisers. It is the marketing manager’s responsibility to exericise control over the whole communication package.

  • Fundamentally Altering Organisation Structure

    Arun Maira, formerly of  the BCG wrote book Redesigning the Aeroplane While Flying. According to him, institutions are not merely organisation with hierarchies and budgets. They are also processes by which socities perform functions. These also include norms by which the socities coduct themselves. Therefore, institutioal reform cannot be achieved only by redrawing organisational charts or creating new organisations with old templates. We cannot merely redesign the seats in the aeroplane when it is expected to fly out of the atmosphere into space. We have to change its structure more fundamentally.

  • Integrated Newsroom

    The journalistic equivalent of corporate world’s breakthrough or innovation is the concept of integrated newsroom. These days people browse the Internet, keep news channels running to keep an eye on the flashes/tickers, scan Facebook walls and Twitter timelines and reach the links for interesting news. They also read articles in the magazines and newspapers. All these activities, say a bit of everything ! On similar lines, a newsroom must do a bit of everything if it has to retain its relevance. Instead, it has to do a lot of everything. Traditionally, separate teams were hired to do each of this function. One team to run the print media, another for videos and a third to take care of the websites. This was not economical. These days in integrated newsrooms, there are a few specialists — visual editors, graphic artists who provide specialised services to a large number of reporters and editors, working across the media. A software that seamlessly connects these multiple services and provide files for the print is welcome. These days the stories are broken on the website and are updated constantly. The analysis too accompanies a story. Social media are extensively used. There is widespread use of multimedia, including video. People can access this on muliple devices — phones, tablets through applications and website. A newspaper is an outcome of all these activities in the last 12 hours or 18 hours. All this is done without compromising journalistic integrity.

    Integrated newsrooms for both the traditional and new media have been around for quite sometime. News is consumed first on digital devices. Consumer action happens here. Media companies work on mobile first or web first philosophy. Print players have forayed into digital media. The world is changing. Print journalism has to evolve. Writing in real time is couched in different language — different from the language that is used for the next morning reading. It is not just a change in technology. It is a change in working habits and timing too. The newsroom of future will be less and less like the newsroom of the past.

  • Camel Brand — Camlin

    In the 1930s, the Dandekars sold ink and ink powders under the Horse brand moniker. However, while diversifying into fountain pens, the name was not considered suitable. D.P. Dandekar was enjoying tea in an Irani cafe and came across camel cigarettes ad. A camel stores nourishment in its hump, and runs across the desert. So an ideal fountain pen writes for miles once you fill ink in it. He thus selected Camel brand. The ink was called Camlin, a combination of Camel and ink

  • Screens Multiply for Films

    Previously, an analogue print of the film cost anything between Rs. 50000 to 60000. This cost has been brought down by digitisation to Rs. 10000 to 12000 per screen, a reduction by 1/5th. This itself is an incentive to a producer to release his films in more theatres. Accordingg to FICCI_KPMG Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report, 2014, approximately 95 percent of commercially viable screens have been digitised.

    An analogue print was heavy — it used to weigh 40-50 kg. and was different to transport. These days an entire film can be stored in a pen-drive or downloaded directly into cinema hall’s projection room through satellite. Even storage rooms and trunks are not necessary.

    In 2004, Veer Zara was released in 625 screens. Dhoom2 in 2006 was released in 1000 screens. By 2008, Ghajini was released in 1550 screens.In 2011, Ra.One was released in 2900 screens. Dhoom 3 had a release on 3800 screens in 2013. Kick was released in 2014 on 5000 screens. Its a huge rise in the number of screens since 2004 — almost 9 times.

    Screens are released across the metros and smaller towns at the same time. It reduces the scope of piracy. It enables a producer to exploit a territory commercially immediately. Previously it took several months to do so.

    The role of audience feed back has also reduced along with the simultaneous release.

    The digital format made a debut in 2007-08. Dhoom3 in 2013 was not released in analogue format at all.

  • Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) Acting Course

    The acting course was discontinued in 1978 and was reintroduced again in 2004. It had been shut for over 25 years. FTII equips you better in terms of knowledge and craft. Of the two years, six months are dedicated to learning other aspects like editing, sound and camera.