Introduction

Bollywood movies have such a high appeal that their fans are spread all over the world. There is not
one person who does not know who Amitabh Bachchan or ShahRukh Khan is. Bollywood movies not
only have a huge audience inside India but also in overseas countries where there are a lot of non
resident Indians. Bollywood Movies are quite popular because their plots are quite cheesy, full of
extravagant songs with plenty of costume changes, and contain unbearable love scenes. Bollywood
Movies are one of the tools which allowed first generation Indians to stay in touch with their culture.
The massive appeal of Bollywood Movies has made the industry stand up and take notice. Big
budget Bollywood movies have tried to capitalise on selling their movies to overseas audiences as
that’s where the majority of their theatrical revenues come from. They can easily make a good
amount of money from theatrical releases and DVD releases in Europe and the US. Even though
Bollywood Movies are twice the number of traditional Hollywood movies they are unable to make as
much as them due to their limited reach. Bollywood film producers are looking to gain a share of the
markets in Europe and the US by targeting local audiences. It is a bit difficult to gain access to mass
audiences even if they succeed in making a crossover movie. It is not easy to come up with the same
marketing budget as Hollywood movies as they don’t have enough funds to launch such a big
Publicity blitz. There are risks associated with launching a Bollywood Movie for a Western market
due to its low appeal. The marketing budget of a good Hollywood Movie is the size of a typical
Bollywood Blockbuster movie. Marketing a Bollywood movie is not an easy task. Marketers need to
find out ways on how they can introduce the Western audience to Bollywood Movies and make
them aware. There is a market for Bollywood in the West if the right measures are taken.

Market for Bollywood Movies

Bollywood Movies have managed to capture the hearts of their local fanbase and capture a bit of the
hard earned money of their expatriate population. They would love to tap into the lucrative US and
European Markets as they spend billions of dollars a year at the movies. Bollywood Movies are only
for a niche market in these areas and not everyone will be a big fan of these movies. Bollywood
movies were not acceptable to people earlier due to their plots. However with the immense
globalisation Bollywood movies are changing track so they can be more appealing to others. If they
can adopt the right marketing measures then they will be able to market their movies to these
audiences.

Bollywood movies have been around forever but then they need to be introduced to a totally new
market. This means that the promoters of the movie have to start from scratch while promoting
them. It is not a simple task to develop a new market for an existing product as there are a lot of
pitfalls associated with the sale of this product. Adopting an effective strategy to promote a
Bollywood Movie is a Herculean task as it requires a large amount of capital to create awareness
amongst people. It has to be be targeted properly towards a mass audience. There are a few ways
on how these movies can be marketed towards a particular market. A good promoter would like to
make sure that his product reaches the maximum number of people so that it is a success. They are
unable to get many takers for Bollywood Movies as there are a minority of people who watch them
and they are only based in certain areas. They need to find out the marketing strategy required to
promote the movie before it is sold.
Segmentation of the market is the easiest way to separate the audiences and identify whom to
target. The Mass market consists of both Indian, Pakistani viewers as well as the Western
Audiences. The probability of the South Asians watching Bollywood Movies is higher than Western
audiences watching Bollywood. There have been a number of small successes in Hollywood where
movies such as “Monsoon Wedding” and “The Namesake” were money grosser and appealed to
Western Audiences though they failed to find many takers in India.

Adopting a proper Market Segmentation strategy will allow the movie to be marketed in a proper
way. It has been established that there are two segments in the market which are the minorities
who watch Bollywood fare and then there are the Mass audiences who watch mainstream movies.

A sure fire way of promoting Bollywood movies is to use the most effective solution of Mass
Marketing. Mass Marketing can be used to promote a Bollywood movie towards all sorts of
audiences with one marketing budget. This sort of strategy looks at audiences from one point of
view and does not have any special requirement for them. This will however not guarantee that the
promotion budget does not go out of hand and the promoters can concentrate on a single strategy
to get their movie out to as many people as possible. However this sort of strategy can fail if it is
used to launch the wrong product. A number of big budget Bollywood movies used this strategy to
target mass audiences to get maximum exposure. This marketing strategy is not for any particular
segment of the market and is more like a blind aim at capturing as much as it can. It simply uses one
strategy to market the movie without taking into account which audience it wants to target.

Promoters of Bollywood movies can also adopt a better way of targeting the right segment of the
market by relying on Concentrated Marketing. They can choose the right segment of the market
they want to target and adapt their strategy according to their needs. Concentrated marketing
strategy will be a big money saver for them as they know the segment they are going for. In this case
the marketers can target either the Western Audiences or they can go for the Minority market to
increase their coverage. The marketing budget will only be allocated towards the segment they are
targeting. Promotions can be done via the proper channels which inform people of the upcoming
releases. This can work well for medium or lower budget movies which don’t have the budget to
promote their movies in a big manner. This strategy will not work well to promote Bollywood movies
to a Western audience but will work rather well on the media targeting Bollywood fans. This strategy
does however create awareness at the minimum costs and promotes the movies. The strategy is a
big failure when it comes to creating some interest in Western Circles as it will mainly go unnoticed
due to the lack of publicity in the mainstream media.
A fair compromise can be the adoption of a Differentiation Marketing strategy where there will be a
fair chance to develop two alternate campaigns to attract different viewers. People who usually
watch Bollywood Movies are not usually big fans of Hollywood Movies. They are usually targeted by
marketing strategies which show the true face of a Bollywood Movie as that is their cup of tea. It will
be difficult for someone in the West to understand a Bollywood Movie as their theatrical trailers are
totally different from the way Hollywood trailers are presented. It makes good sense to use the
differentiation strategy to have two different campaigns to attract the different segments and appeal
to them. The differentiation strategy can be a bit of a problem as it costs too much money to run
two separate campaigns as well as the Human resources required to run two side by side campaigns.
The marketing strategy for the Western Audience can focus on all the parts they can identify with so
it makes the movie more appealing. They can do the same thing for Indian audiences so that they
are also happy. This is a very sophisticated way and can be quite expensive as they have to be quite
precise in the sort of strategy they need to pursue to attract the different segments. This sort of
strategy will not work for all movies and can be deemed a failure as it may not work for one of the
segments. A good example of a successful movie which can be partly classified as Bollywood was
“Bend it like Beckham” which was primarily a British Asian movie but had a different campaign for
the western audiences as well as the minority audiences. The end product was that the movie was
the same for both audiences except for the fact that in some places it was dubbed in hindi to appeal
more to Indian Audiences. It was a crossover movie with great appeal and could have utilized the
Mass Audience marketing campaign but then since there were two versions of the movie it made
more sense to having two separate campaigns. It worked big time as it was one of the biggest
grossing movies ever.

Question3

The Case Study suggests that the marketing of the movie should be handed over to the Western
distributors as they have more knowledge of the industry. Therefore I would recommend that Nico
should definitely go for it and take the mantle of marketing these movies to a Western Audience. It
is a challenge for him as Bollywood movies are not the sort of movies in demand. They are totally
unlike Asian movies which have a great demand in Hollywood and are the most remade movies ever.
People are aware of Bollywood movies but they don’t have the appeal to matter to an average joe in
the US or European areas as they can’t identify with it. People will not be seeking to watch
Bollywood Movies as they have not heard of them to such an extent. This sort of a product is called
an unsought product as there is no demand for it.
Nico can do his homework to decide on how the movie should be marketed by utilising the
Marketing Mix tools to determine how a movie can be marketed. This will allow him to classify the
product which is the movie into separate mixes and understand how they all work. A marketing mix
stands for the product, place, price and promotion to make a product successful.

The most important part of the marketing mix is to deal with the features of the product which
constitute how well the product will be received in the market. There is the language barrier within
the movie which makes it difficult for people to understand the language. Bollywood movies are
made with a lot of style and panache but then they lack proper subtitles. The subtitles are in poor
taste as they are literal translations of the dialogues in English. It is important for them to get the
right translation as it sounds quite comical. They even have subtitles for songs which ruin the whole
effect of the movie. the production values of the movie need to be changed as they are not on par
with Hollywood movies. The screenplays and storytelling in these movies are also quite
melodramatic and are a bit too difficult for audiences to understand. Audiences will also find fault
with the song and dance routines in the movies which are nothing but eye candy for the audience
but fail to bring the plot forward. Audience members will also be confused to see actors transported
from the slums of Mumbai to the snowy mountains of Switzerland in a song sequence. In order to
minimize the risk they should cut down on the song and dance sequences from the movie unless
required. Since these movies are already made it would help to employ a western editor who
understands the sensibilities of the western audience to cut down on the number of song
sequences. They also need to study the length of the movie and cut back on the length of the movie
as it will make it easier for everyone. It is a well known fact that people in the West do not have
much time to spare towards a movie. The shorter the length of the movie is the easier it is for them
to pay attention to it.

The price plays an important role in the success of a product. Bollywood movies are supposed to be
a proven product for an untested market. It does not make any sense to price it too high as people
will give it a miss. The best way to go about it is to give special offers to people so that they can be
enticed to watching something new. Perhaps they can give away free promotional tickets to
viewings of the movies to gauge the audience reaction. Pricing the ticket at a lower rate will be
another way of getting the attention of prospective audience members. It will make it a more
tempting proposition than paying a high price for normal tickets. It has become quite expensive
watching movies at the cinema and a price drop will only bring more people to the cinemas. They
could also set up a number of deals with local vendors to give further discounts to people who watch
Bollywood movies. A low price will be a good way of getting people to watch the movie and then
giving it proper word of mouth publicity. The key is not to price the ticket too low or to give away
too many free tickets that it results in a loss. The profit margin will be much better as there is the
potential to attract more customers to the movies at the expense of a lower price. if they are able to
get a percentage of customers to watch their movies then have managed to reach their goal of
selling more tickets.

In order for the product to a proper success it has to be marketed in the right areas. An experienced
Marketer will only target those areas which are the most likely to watch a Bollywood movie. For
example the movies will not be marketed all over Europe as it will be too big of an exercise. A big
release in Europe involves a lot of work as they need to come up with subtitles in different European
languages. This still does not mean that the movie will be a success in those areas. This means there
is a smaller pool of areas to choose from instead of giving the movie a wide release. A good idea is
to release the movies in mostly urban areas with a good mix of targeted segments. A soft release in
certain areas will allow them to test its progress. Bollywood Movies are usually released in cities with
a sizeable established audience. Popular movies occupy the most slots at the multiplexes in the UK
and US. They are also one of the top grossing movies despite their limited release. It wouldn’t make
any sense to target new areas when they can already try out the areas the movies are being released
in and to attract other segment members as well. It helps to keep the net small and will minimise the
risk of failure.

The last part of the marketing mix is the promotion of the product. The success of a Bollywood
movie will lie in the part where the marketer does his best to promote the movie extensively to
create awareness. Awareness for a movie is only created if there is a substantial amount of
promotion done. Bollywood Movies are usually made for the amount it takes to market a big budget
Hollywood movie. They do not have such a big marketing budget for the movies. However if the
movies to be promoted are big budget ones and they have good stars in them then good promotion
will be able to generate a lot of buzz for these movies. A good promotions strategy will allow the
stars of the movie to go around on a promotions junket to promote the movie as much as they can.
ShahRukh Khan was contracted by 20 th Century Fox to promote his latest blockbuster by going on a
series of promotional tours in the main Urban Centres in the US as well as promotional tours in the
UK and various parts of Europe. The promotions budget was quite high for the movie which was also
a big budget movie. Promotions always manage to catch the curiosity of audience members may
they be Indian or Western. It allows a lot of hype to be created and does its job of grabbing the
attention of audience members. If people are made aware of a new release then that means that the
job is half complete.

In addendum they can also study the product life cycle of the movie to see how the movie can
potentially bring more growth in the future. The introduction of the product will allow them to see
the state of the market. The success or failure of the Bollywood movies will let them evaluate if they
need to stay in the market or if they need to pull out.

Conclusion

In conclusion there are a number of ways the movie can be promoted but it does not necessarily
mean that the movie will be a success with the audiences. The market segments have been
identified and the strategies required to conduct the marketing strategies have been discussed as
well. the marketing strategies have their own benefits and drawbacks. They are each suited to a
different sort of market segment. There is a lot of work required in marketing a Bollywood movie. It
is good to try and market these movies in the best way possible. The success of the finished product
all depends on the quality and price of the product, the promotional strategy and the areas where it
will be marketed in. They will be able to make some headway if they adopt these measures.