A good post, but I would like to disagree with some of the points you have put up

“Besides the usual hoardings etc, they had gone for non-conventional media too. Priyanka Chopra created a twitter account to which now she has >30k followers” – No man, Pri Chops’ twitter account had come up much earlier, its just that she used it to good effect to promote Kaminey, and she is using it to promote “What’s your Raashee” as well.

BTW, this using non-conventional media like attending fashion shows, coming on the TV as celeb judges, celebrating success parties of music CDs etc is being done by every other big releases now. It happened with New York, Kambakht Ishq, Luck and Love Aaj Kal as well.

And not only did Pri Chops and Shahid Kapoor attend Masan’d show, they attended several other shows as well on CNN-IBN, Channel V, MTV etc. Even the smaller actors like Rajatava Datta (Shumon), Lobo (Shiv Subramanyam), Tashi (Tenzing Nema) and Bhope (Amole Gupte) did a lot of interviews in regional channels. In fact, this was perhaps the best marketing planning strategy followed by any movie in recent past – VB had an ensemble cast from all regions in India who promoted the movie in their language and region.

http://movies.rediff.com/slide-show/2009/jul/21/slide-show-1-meet-the-cast-of-kaminey.htm

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1090819/jsp/entertainment/story_11377799.jsp

Also, the fact that Kaminey used what has now become famous as “paid reviews” – two days before the release of the film, a special screening by the movie’s producers for a select group (Raja Sen must have also been there , though I doubt he liked it since it didn’t star SRK). “Rab be bana di jodi” was the one who started the trend, since then taken up by “Ghajini” , “Dev D” and “Kambakht Ishq”. While this has backfired for some, for Kaminey, this has been a bonus.

But I feel that despite a good start to the post, you have made a rather lame ending to it with “the lessons learnt” column. You could have spoken about strategies like “using the correct enseble cast”, “proper usage of media and other promotion channels”, “paid reviews”,” correct time of releasing the movie” (close to the independence day weekend with no big movies to follow up – the next big movie is “Blue”, which is releasing in September end, so Kaminey has a free run till then, an advantage that “Love Aaj Kal” and “NewYork” didn’t have) and “an unconventional product, with lisps and all” that did the trick

Nice read, perhaps the viral aspects could have been covered a little more.

Nice article. I feel if the product is really good then it is quite easy for it to standout. Friday and Saturday shows of Kaminey (translated to scoundrels in London) were housefull

The publicity has done well, created a lot of hype, and the movie is making a killing of it.

Really an awesome read. Didnt have a chance to catch up on the marketing hype and blitz thats happening in india for the movie…all i have are the downloads of the kaminey songs.
So for me it was awesome to know that the movie did so well.

I think Siddesh is right when he says its all about the product: here the movie.
Actually its all about a good story. Once u have a good story, it all grows from there..the passion feeds onto everyone in the team..and what u have is a blockbuster and marketing success [product].

Yeah..for the most part, the makers of Kaminey got it right.
Gosh Vishal Bhardway directs movies, writes stories , gives music….what does he not do??

Siddhesh mentions about the s->f conversion in the section “Pre-Release Hype” and then mentions Swine Flue in the next section.

My first reaction was “Fwine Slue”!!!

ok..thats a bad joke..
but what if the Kaminey marketing team had used this opportunity to negate the fear of swine flue by asking Shahid aka “Fahid” Kapoor and Pri Chops [thanks kaushik...i just so like this acronym for her] to appear in a series of marketing ads where they can say something like “dont worry……Fwine Slue kamina hai”

hehe…two objectives would be achieved
1. the buzz and curiosity further increases with the “F->S” conversion.
2. the effect of swine flue on the movie going morale of the public would be negated. People would still have Kaminey in their minds inspite of the mumbai shut down. Well its just a small step..and may be very incremental to the marketing success of Kaminey….but nevertheless…anything that works for the bottom like of a company…works right?

nice post siddhesh!
and kudos to leaving it open ended.
else how would yours truly get an out of the box trigger as i just explained

BTW, guys, watch the trailer of “Ishqiya” – Vishal Bhardwaj’s next movie.

It is mind blowing, and has a very “Butch Cassidy Sundance Kid” look and feel.

Not to forget some of the dialogues that I am sure are going to be bigger draws that S-F

ex – (1) apne gaon me ******* dhone se pehle tamancha chalana shikhate hain

(2) “aur kuchh hi din pe apni gaon me, uske baad…………..”

(3) “tumhari pyar pyar hain, aur hamara pyar ***?”

etc etc

VB rocks, seriously (though I still believe Anurag Kashyap rocks more, but that’s a matter of opinion)

Well looking at some of the analyses that you have done in the past, this one looks rather lame to me. For one, the post lacks any depth scrutiny into the promotional vehicles used and their effectiveness while also diverted to the swine flu issue, to which by no means marketing team took any action (Unless ofcourse if you want to count “No action” as an action here).

As Kaushik has already pointed out that better techniques were used by some of the other recent movies and no new innovation is visible in this case. (Twitter might be one but am not sure if others have not done it before and also I have my doubts on the effectiveness to which it was used)

Again reiterating Shubham’s words, the reason why it dint fail even despite swine flu issues was that the product was good (By product, I here refer to the Movie as well as the song Dhan Te Nan, which was used in promotions). Good songs have been an age old formula to promote movies and hence I dont see any need for words of appreciation for this campaign.

All on all, this is the first time I am so much disappointed by the quality of your post. Given your caliber and your track record, you could have done much more justice to the topic. I hate to say it but I smell more of your Maratha love in this post than anything else.

PS: Expecting better posts on this forum and especially from you.

the H1N1 or Swine Flu Virus is very scary at first but now it is well controlled by vaccines and prevention by avoiding going into places with incidence of swine flu.

| H1N1 or Swine Flu is a bit scary but it a good thing to note that this virus is not that very deadly