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MARKETING MIX FOR MOVIES

Marketing mix is the set of controllable variables and their levels used to influence the target market. The elements of marketing mix are the basic components of a marketing plan. Also known as the Four P's, the marketing mix elements are price, place, product, and promotion.

Product: The base for a well-defined movie marketing strategy starts with the movie itself. A well-researched script with a well-woven screenplay is where the core of the movie-marketing strategy for a movie should be invested. It is not about who sees the movie only, it is also about catering to a definitive audience who watches your movie in theatres, and more often than not, more than once. While other elements of marketing focus on attracting these audiences it is this aspect of marketing i.e. the product that aims at satisfying these audiences.

Placement: With the first element satisfied we move on the element that makes the first element possible. It is true that an audience will be satisfied only when they are attracted to go into the theatre to watch the movie. It is placement that accounts for attracting the audience into crowding the theatre. Placement as a term is used to describe the modus-operandi of placing the communication and promotion strategy of the movie on to media and non-media platforms available in the industry today.

There is a complete media-mix that should be put into place usually 15% to 25% of the production cost of the movie is invested into the marketing of the movie in Bollywood. But then there are movies like Lagaan, Boom, Out of Control, Khel and others who have spent as much as 40% of their production cost on marketing. But only Lagaan out of all these movies became a superhit and needles to point out that that had a lot to do with the central theme of the movie.
Today it makes perfect sense to collaborate with one or more media partners in order to ensure maximum focused publicity of your movie through certain guided platforms.

The PLACE of Movies:


A marketing attitude tickles the creative genius in many a digital entertainment entrepreneur! Where and how do your prospects find (and use) your movie products? That's marketing "place."
It's about making one's products and services available to prospective buyers when, where and how they want them. Direct marketing to your end customer and filling the distribution channel in between. Marketing strategies mix and match indirect channels such as wholesale and exhibitor channels. Single or multiple channels. Long supply chains or short. Domestic and/or global. Urban, suburban, rural.

With the ever-inventive entrepreneurial energy in the entertainment whorl, people find venues for entertainment sales not only through traditional theaters and broadcast, but on street corners, in homes, over the Internet, over phones, through clubs, by ship, plane and with leaps over tall buildings! Options for delivery of intellectual property are exploding: movies, games, music, news, and educational content. Distribution takes place through theaters, rental stores, sell-through stores, catalogs, non-theatrical groups, the Internet, even cell phones and the latest new media gadget.
Just a few of the technologies that have provided platforms for creative sales of digital media include broadband, cellular phones, hard disk miniaturization, WYSIWIG

interfaces, database tools, simulators, and the growing options in integrated home theater systems. Technologies that were invented for delivery mechanisms become the entertainment themselves. There hasn't been such a cross fertilization of place and function since the Italian Renaissance shook the communications world with the mixture of art, music, literature and political ideas in the 1400s.
Is today's digital renaissance any different? We have digital entertainment, education and news tapping the political and military fronts. Digital delivery of information affects business, education, government and family communities.

The half-life of platforms, strategies and formats are shorter than ever. Affiliate programs on the Internet saw their peak. Now we have RSS feeds, blogs, vblogs, audio blogs and mobile computing. Many families no longer lease a land-based phone line--relying strictly on their cellular phones, instant messaging and e-mail for personal communications. Through all these mobility and technological changes, the human factor remains constant. People like people. They like meeting places and a reason to get together. The campfire might be digital, but it hasn't lost its glow. That's where marketing shines.
What does the technical digi-master need to know about the marketing realities of place? Think Zip drive. Floppies. Analog. Radio. Local television. Books. Stone tablets. The frustration felt by today's consumers about upgrading, lost data, boat anchors and mice is real. A marketing 'tude about technology is really about availability of personal and business photos and recordings and letters and records -- not to mention collections of music, games and movies.

Place is about availability -- not just sales availability, but usability. Ability is the heart of a marketing attitude. Backward compatibility, cross-platform compatibility, global standards. Successful technologists think about people as they contort bits and bites into new opportunities.
To put a human face on this process of change, remember how parents struggle to rear their children who, in their teen years, hit their stride. Technology links these cutting edge communicators with family, friends, advisors, teachers and coworkers in the home, the car, the office, and the back pocket. It's about place. Availability. Community. Sharing the joy, the opportunity and the content of the message.

Design for sharing and for varying levels of technological compatibility, adaptability and speed of adoption are powerfully tantalizing and profitable elements of a successful marketing mix.
Options for "place" today are different than twenty years ago. In 1985 Ronald Reagan took office as President. The first laser printers were added to the desktop publishing revolution. The Apple Macintosh and the IBM PC AT home computers had just been released. Microsoft releases its first version of Windows. The first CD-Rom drive for

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personal computers was released sporting a whopping "1X" speed. Is it any wonder people are reeling from the speed of technological change? Today, the "place" of entertainment distribution is mind boggling. Producers and distributors must pick and choose their distribution avenues, but also manage their presence in all of the key market distribution channels. When technologists work closely with marketing strategists, they can keep pace with groundswell market shifts created by competitors, collaborators and global shifts in economic, political and social changes.
"Place" is the grassroots of a marketing attitude. There's still no place like home turf.

MARKETING TO DO Create your in-house list of family, friends, supporters, and industry members, vendors and media
Research the distribution chain in the general movie industry and hint, hint, at least THREE niche markets related to the subject matter of your products Refine your market niche and develop a library of movies with a cohesive core so that you can develop fans -- people who look for the next movie you produce because it touches their interests: genre, subject, ensemble cast, etc.
Get to know your distributors. They are people. They love movies just like you. They see a lot, hear a lot, and think a lot about how to bring quality to their market niches.

Positioning: The entire media, marketing and communication strategy of the movie depends on the positioning of the movie. Positioning is that particular slot in the mind of the audience that the movie positions it in. This kind of positioning has a lot to do with how well defined your target-audience is. The time-consuming and highly complex ordeal of pin-pointing the targetaudience is something that a good movie marketer should take care of in the conceptualisation stage. The movie by and large should appeal to the sensibilities of all kinds of audience but prominently should be positioned for a well defined audience. Based on the projected associations with your targetaudience you must formulate the positioning elements. These positioning elements should highlight and reflect in all the promotions for the movie.

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People: The positioning of the movie has a lot to do with the personification of the movie. Personification finally is the key to creating a brand out of the movie. Lagaan is brand India and Cricket.
It is the central characters (not the actors) of the movie that should enable the making of a brand out of your movie. There should be a well-defined promotion plan that has to be put-into place for promoting the people of the movie (both onscreen and the technical team). The build-up should be such that without overexposing the team there should be enough flurry of activity that will catapult the audiences into the character of the movie even before they see the movie.

Public Relations: Besides the advertising and promotion of the movie there should be a strategic focus on public relations for the movie, both media and non-media public relations play an important role in the success of the movie.
Partners Brands and Bollywood: There is evidence of shortened attention spans and a greater effort to break through the clutter of multitudinous brands and media vehicles. The best way to deliver the message is to catch the customer off-guard when the rational defences are down. The best way to do so is to use the emotional gate rather than the rational gate. The rational gate examines the advantages, benefits, features and seeks value for money; the emotional gate is all about trust, love, identification and belief. It has been noticed that movies operate at the emotional level. These aspects have been leveraged by brands such as Coke, Pepsi, Lux, Airtel, Hyundai, Bagpiper, Lux wherein movies and brands flash discreet (and sometimes indiscreet) messages at their target audiences.

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Then there is also the need to examine synergies between the brands and movies. The successful integration of product placement within the movies storyline has a long history: the first example being the yellow Rajdoot bike used in Raj Kapoors Bobby. Hollywood also leverages brands such as BMW (Bond movies), Jaguar, Ford, Ray Ban (Tom Cruise in Risky Business and Mission Impossible and Will Smith in Men In Black), Starbucks coffee, AOL, AT&T, and so on. My personal favorites are the brand fits created for Nike in What Women Want and for FedEx in Castaway. However, at this point it might be crucial to point out that what is important is that there is complete transparency in the agreement that the movie-marketer and brandmarketer get themselves into. Otherwise things can get really dirty. Recall Rakesh and Hritik Roshan of Koi Mil Gaya v/s Killer Jeans and Emami.

Movies are a different medium and one bad placement can do more damage than 10 good placements. Artistic integrity is crucial for successful brand placements and the operation has to be woven into the script. Sometimes, unreasonable clients demand more footage although research has shown that a 2-minute clip can effectively deliver a message in a credible manner. The placement should be a natural fit and shouldnt be contrived and unnatural. Each effective tie-up between a brand and a movie involves hectic negotiations of around 3-6 months. There is no fixed formula but the factors that are taken into consideration MEDIA during the negotiation stage include: cast and credits; size of the projects and the producers; timing of the release; brand impact; number of screens during release and post-release phase; and possibilities of brand associations through contests and promotions. Depending on the content of the movie and its story line, the movie-maker can sketch a profile of viewers who would flock to see the movie. Then the movie-maker approaches all those brands who could appeal to the targeted viewers. This is followed by a 360 degrees marketing plan for crosspromotions during the various stages of a movies release.

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A list of marketing variables under Product, Place, Promotion, and Price are as follows:

Product Quality Features Options Style Brand name Packaging Sizes Services Warranties Returns

Price List price Discounts Allowances

Place Channels Coverage Locations

Promotion Advertising Personal selling Sales promotion Publicity

Payment period Inventory Credit terms Transport

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