Note: The following post is taken from the archives of PassionForCinema.com, a much-loved platform for cinema enthusiasts. This is being republished here in the spirit of archiving, historical significance, and sharing important conversations with the readers who may not have had access to the original site. The author of the post is Arati Raval (Mumbai, India), who published the post on February 14, 2009, at 12:04 a.m. My comment on the post on February 14th, 2009, 1:18 am.
“You know, this film is for the urban audience.. From, ummm..say 20 – 45 year olds.. Youngsters and family audience.. I am sure they will love it!”
Have you heard something like this? Nothing sounds really amiss when you first hear it. But when you give it a thought, it’s a very complicated thing to understand. The questions that come to my mind, amongst others, are:
Urban audience? What’s that? Don’t cities have all kinds of people?
From age 20 – 40? How do they know teenagers won’t like it?
Family audience? Matlab? Grandmother to 5-year-old or mother, father, 18-year-old son? Or husband, wife?
Is there any such thing as a ‘target audience’??
Then I joined a production house. I worked on the release of 5 films. And I saw the whole process. My head was muddled about the whole idea of trying to sell a film. Maybe it still is. Because marketing, but its very nature, is a creative, subjective medium, just like cinema. Ethics may or may not exist. We go by the judgment of 5 people in the room, who may not know stuff themselves. And when we try to commercialize a creative medium like cinema and use another creative medium commercially (read ‘marketing’) to sell it to people who may or may not be interested, well, you get the drift. It does get complicated.
So… finding a ‘target audience’ is technically an academic exercise done to filter who you want to talk to. Of course, you can’t talk effectively to our billion-plus people all at once. So you put filters. And from there on, honestly, it is a very subjective decision. So, the CEO feels that the ‘urban audience’ will like this film. The EP feels ‘20 – 40 year olds’ will like it. The Marketing Manager thinks that ‘films in this genre did well in Bombay, Delhi, and Bangalore in the past’,,s so that underlines what the CEO said. The screening evoked excited reactions from the young ones in the team, so you can increase that sample size to the entire youth of our country. OK, there seems to be a general agreement.
I am not trying to downplay the entire process. I am just amused by it. About how ad hoc and subjective it can get. Of course, we cannot get too technical about this anyway. You never know with our audience. So it is an exercise that everyone conducts. It is a necessity. A necessary evil? Probably. Many times, we get it right. Like Rock On!! was aptly ‘targeted’ at the young ones, and it worked. The film caught on better than they had thought, and the campaign was spread to smaller cities as well. Mumbai Meri Jaan was sensitively marketed to the ‘urban audience’, probably because they had all witnessed the blasts and other such modern terrorist acts first hand, or at least heard stories from people they know. Their assumption was pretty much bang on, that someone in Jhumritalaiyya, who has a million problems of his own, wouldn’t be interested in what happened in Mumbai some time back. It was just one of the headlines for him. Again, it worked.
A Wednesday - Minimal. Not too much noise. Bang on. Hit.
Jaane Tu..: Lot of noise + color + youth + music overload + Aamir all over the place = Houseful opening.
And then, there are always surprises. Like, Rajshri thought Vivah is a ’small town, family audience’ film. But people in Bombay and Delhi lapped it up just as well. Tashan was positioned as a ‘cool’ film and marketed to the youth. It didn’t even get an opening. A very rare thing for a YRF film, Rarer for one that’s so star-studded – Akshay on a roll, Saif on a high, Kareena fresh after Jab We Met, Saif-Kareena’s first film after their popular link up. Great music! Man, they had everything going for them. Nothing, nothing worked. It’s another thing if a film flops once the audience rejects it. But Tashan failed to even gather one houseful on the first Friday or Saturday. Ditto for Thoda Pyaar Thoda Magic. Targeted towards the kids, neither did it bring them to the theatres, nor did it make them laugh. Of course, marketing cannot make up for a bad film.
And then, there are some confusing ones. Krrish, targeted again, to kids. A universal hit. I know of grandparents and parents who loved it. It’s like marketing McDonald's – lure the kids, and the families will come in too. It worked and how! Munnabhai MBBS and Ghajini. Not targeted at anyone in particular. While the former picked up only on word of mouth after a moderate opening, the latter opened houseful and remained that way for the first few days. Of course, both did well only because people liked it and not because of the marketing. Another film that comes to mind is Om Shanti Om. Noise was made synonymous with marketing. SRK and Deepika were just everywhere one could imagine. I guess for general entertainers, it’s like selling Coca-Cola – visibility is the key because people have already decided to go for it, you just need to keep reminding them about your date. Chak De India was not marketed at all to leverage either the SRK or the YRF superpower. The film still opened houseful. In this case, we can argue that it’s an SRK starrer. True. But still a case in point. Satya didn’t use any marketing gimmick. Just the usual TV promos, posters, press interviews.. The works. It opened fairly well and went on to become a hit. Good films get lapped up in the strangest of pockets. From what I know, Satya was a pan-India hit.
There are several more examples.
As more differentiated cinema gets made (Welcome to Sajjanpur, Mithya, Black Friday, A Wednesday, etc.), the need to understand the marketing of films is only increasing. Cinema is competing with all forms of entertainment - from bowling and a night out at a pub to a drive and shopping. 500 bucks for a couple to see a film at the multiplex is a lot. Do we know how to fight for the cinegoer’s wallet? The dynamics of our society have radically changed. Are we prepared?
The point remains. Is there any such thing as a ‘target audience’? Billions are spent in wooing them. Do we really know who they are? Would we ever know what ‘target audience’ really means? Is identifying a target audience merely a routine, mandatory exercise that all Producers just have to do? As we begin understanding more of our audiences (or so we think), are we making things simpler or more complicated? If there is a way to genuinely understand it, I would love to know. It will make for some fascinating study. Because I have an inkling that maybe, just maybe, many of the success stories that we have seen could well have been flukes.
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