Marketing Fundas for Bollywood Part 2

Continuing on the theme, we look into the 4 Ps of marketing applied to Bollywood.

Product, the first P

For ease of understanding, let us call this either masala or unique (non-masala). The masala movie consists of taking known ingredients like emotion, drama, fights, songs, a dance item number (formerly known simply as a cabaret), and a comedy track as exemplified by the hero's sidekick played by Mehmood, Deven Varma, Asrani, Johny Walker, or any of their current counterparts, though they are on the endangered list. Mix all these in a palatable mixture, and with different stars either in predictable lead pairs, such as Dharmendra-Babita, Or Dharmendra-Hema Malini, or Amitabh-Rekha, or unusual ones, like Amitabh-Hema (I think they starred together in Kasauti in their heyday once). The endless lost and found tales of the sixties and seventies are one form of this product, and the breezy rom-coms staring Shammi Kapoor are another. The Jubilee (Rajendra) Kumar's movies and most Dharmendra films are also of this type. The Madras masala movies with Jeetendra, Sridevi, Jayaprada combos usually were another variation, usually more Over-the-top than the others, with extravagant dance sequences and emotions.

Occasional spice is added by having double roles for the lead actor or actress. Another variation is the historical based on a king like Akbar (Mughal-e-Azam)or Shivaji, where the ingedients are already available in the story. A touch of the supernatural added, and you have the mythological stories of the Ramayan or Mahabharat kind. Of late, Hollywood has been imitating these successfully, with tranposed time periods making it look very modern and SFX (special effects)- oriented, but it is a variation of the same, ancient idea.

The unusual film is a product that cannot be easily classified into a masala category. Either the storyline is very different, or some of the masala ingredients are missing. The songless movies like Kanoon, Ittefaq, or a recent silent movie called Pushpak. Realistic films like Ankur, Nishant, Aakrosh and Chakra are also a part of this category of products, with unusual themes.

Within the two formats, the quality of the story, script, acting, direction, music and lyrics, or photography make the films different to an extent. For example, Mithun Chakraborty became known as the "poor man's Amitabh because he played similar roles in lower budget films, before carving out his own identity as a disco dancing hero. or, the way Nasir Husain treated the story gave him many successes using a similar formula as his unsuccessful peers. Songs were differentiators in many cases, and an RD Burman or an OP Nayyar could transform a pedestrian film into a rocking entertainer, as Hum Kisise Kum Nahin, or Kashmir Ki Kali can prove.

One could also classify the product as original or adapted from another source, but with creative media like films, it is difficult to tell if anything is entirely original.