Top ten promotional strategies adopted by actors

There was a phase when Bollywood film promotions were restricted to a launch party followed by its musical release event and lastly a premier hosted for the entire film fraternity. The film industry had a simple marketing recipe that is sign-in a celebrity, create a masala entertainer and here you go with a warm hugging success. If the film emerged out to be a blockbuster, it was followed up with a triumphant party or big get-to-gather bash.

Now, times have changed, today a lot of publicity and promotional stunts go hand-in-hand to make the film successful right from writing the storyboard to completing the screening process. And the entire thing is well arranged with a strong marketing mix. Releasing films on Friday is one of the chief reasons behind innovative promotional stunts of the Bollywood industry. We no longer get to see typical romantic or drama films running non-stop for many years in theatres and generating a huge cash flow in a relaxed manner.

It is the initial weekend that decides the fate of a film now. The precious words ‘Silver Jubilee’ and ‘Golden Jubilee’ have now been replaced with the Rs. 100 club or Rs. 200 club. The credit goes to none other than the multi-talented hero of the Bollywood industry, Aamir Khan who is best known as the ‘real marketing guru’. He better knows how to make a film successful. Till now we have not seen any other actor, director or producer being so involved in the film’s promotion. His perfection is so much that every time he comes up with a new idea to promote his film. The biggest marketing examples can be seen during the promotion Ghajini, Taare Zameen Par, 3 idiots, Talash and the recently released movie Dhoom 3.

We can now say that film industry is making the genuine efforts in to publicize their respective films.  Today, we see publicity efforts commencing five to six months before the release of the film to generate curiosity among the audiences.

Post Aamir’s promotional strategies, many actors have started adopting the trend of promoting the film uniquely. The list is as follows:

1. In order to promote Ken Ghosh’s ‘Chance Pe Dance’, the lead pair Shahid Kapoor and Genelia D’Souza spent a night together inside a car.

1. Legendary actor Amitabh Bachchan is no untouched from this unique trend. He adopted a different measure to publicize his film ‘Rann’. The actor was seen reading the news on a TV channel. Not only this, the director of movies Mr. Ram Gopal Verma even distributed a ten-page daily newspaper ‘Rann Times’ till the final release of the film.

1. Likewise, Salman also jumped in the battle race of promoting the projects. During his pet-project ‘Veer’, actor Salman Khan had declared a quest for unrecognized heroes who had performed the acts of bravery in their real lives. The actor did all this to promote his film. To everyone’s surprise the film did really well at the box-office and ended up grossing huge collections.
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3. We must say this was the most ridiculous publicity stunt we have ever witnessed when Shahrukh Khan was detained by the airport authorities in Newark. The entire episode took place just a few days before the release of My Name Is Khan. An appropriate PR gimmick? Don’t you think so?
4. Imran filed a PIL against the enactment of the drinking age being raised to 25 years in Mumbai. The objective behind the entire stunt was to promote Delhi Belly and thankfully the film received accolades from the people.

1. There was news of accidental marriage between John Abraham and Genelia D'souza while shooting the fake marriage scene in the movie ‘Force’. Later, it turned out to be a promotional stunt. Good way to divert the attention of people!
2. UTV arranged a trip to Chambal for some selected fans to promote the Irrfan Khan starrer Pan Singh Tomar. The film was well received by the audience and critics not only because of good story line and acting but because of this unique promotional strategy too.
3. Remember that fake baby bump of Vidya Balan for Sujoy Ghosh’s Kahaani? The actress adopted the trick to attract the attention of the audience. Really, such a good idea!
4. And who can forget that pink buffalo in Matru Ki Bijlee Ka Mandola? Earlier we thought that film was a political satire but later it emerged out something else. The film didn’t work and flopped after the release.
5. Romantic link ups is another PR strategy to promote a film. And this trick was adopted by the lead pair of 3G, Neil Nitin Mukesh and Sonal Chauhan just before the release of their film. However, their trick didn’t work and the film bombed at the box-office . 

      kuldeep is addicted to the internet. He owns a number of blogs on entertainment news online and the latest Indian politics news.Indian Mirror is a free Entertainment magazine in Australia. This magazine dedicated to covering the best entertainment news & reviews online, Lifestyle news sports news in Australia.