Watched Madhur Bhandarkar’s Fashion yesterday, I liked the movie…really liked it, though I think the name of the movie should have been “Kimaya’s Fashion” or “Fashion from Kimaya” J. Another interesting case of in-film advertising with not one or two brands rather many. To name a few, which I can remember – Kimaya, Lenovo, Sunsilk, Café Coffee Day, Reebok, LG, Cellucom were the key brands with Kimaya and Lenovo being the most prominent ones. In fact in-film advertisements were so loud and clear that I couldn’t help myself noticing a Godrej carton as well while Priyanka was relocating but guess Godrej’s presence was just by chance and not planned as it was shown hardly for a second or two.
But the good thing about in-film advertising in Fashion was that the brands were chosen carefully and the presentation was perfectly in sync with the scenes and sequences. Nowhere they looked jarring or force-fitted and instead of being just used in background they were properly integrated with the script esp. Kimaya considering the last round of fashion shows in the movie were critical part of the script. Overall good example of in-film advertising otherwise we have seen some horrible examples of in-film advertisement in Bollywood – remember Subhash Ghai’s Yaadein and those numerous brands within the movie…oh God those were very irritating. Good thing is that commercially the movie has made quite some money by these in-film advertisements. Out of total 220 million investments in Fashion, the producer has made 85 million by just these branded advertisements only! Now that’s approx 39% of the overall investment and definitely is some money to make through in-film advertisements.
In-film advertising in Bollywood is getting popular day by day and advertisers are coming out with interesting ways of integration. If done in the right way, it’s definitely an interesting promotional strategy which is mutually beneficial for the brands as well as the movie – brands get the right kind of visibility and registration in the minds of consumers whereas producers get to make some good money to cover up their cost of production. But such in-film advertisements only make sense if they are done in the right way like the recent example of Fashion otherwise in most of the cases they just end up in being logo showcased in background for few seconds.
Rhett
I haven’t seen fashion. I dont intend to. Think it wont be that great. Just my opinion.
Abhishek
I too haven’t seen ‘Fashion’ and don’t intend to as well. Another irritating example was ‘Krrish’.
Thanks for your comment on my post. Can’t tell you, how much encouraging your words were!
I was actually busy with launch of a new social-venture: http://donateyourpc.in. Please check out the site. Shame on me, I dint even blog about this site 🙂
nautankey
Oh the only in-line film advertising I have seen was for Zingaro in some tamil n telug movies.Zingaro banners as background in item songs and cartels in villain’s den :P.
As said it needs lot of intelligence to place them without being too explicit.Still remember one of the sponsors who came forward to support my group’s english play.The play was set in US,the sponsor wanted one of the characters to mouth the product’s name..well and good…but then it was “aachi masala”.. I could never fit him into the script and we lost a few bucks :))
Kanupriya
@ Rhett: Hmmm…if you dont like watching Bhandarkar’s movie then maybe you wont like it 🙂
@ Abhishek: Yeah agree, Krrish was damn irritating. Ah, I will surely check out this site. Is it done by you?
@ Nautankey: Oh if it was Masala and force fitted then good you didn’t take it. Such placements look quite awkward. BTW you do plays? Wow…would love to know more details about those.
Sindhu :)
Hey I liked the movie too. I thought it was well made for sure.
I was thinking on this Kimaya thing too – it was the most obvious thing – didn’t notice lenovo much though! Noticed CCD, LG and all – and the SunSilk ad was pretty obvious too!
And I liked the way all of them were put in the movie too – like you said.. it was pretty intelligent 🙂
nautankey
Well ye just imagine an american mouthing I had a good breakfast thanks to aachi masala :)).Guess smirnoff did a good job with bond movies,kinda made a attitude statement being associated with bond.
Yup got a group formed with my college time friends.Do check http://www.rebelz.in when you find time…now this is a good attempt at in-blog-advertising for our group 😛
Kanupriya
@ Sindhu: Yea agree…it was well-made
@ Nautankey: Sure sure..thanks for the link, I will surely check it out. I loooove watching good plays…when I was living in Mumbai I used to watch lots of them, don’t get much chance to watch them now in Bangalore 🙁