IN-MOVIE PRODUCT PLACEMENT - INDIAN CONTEXT

Movies always had very powerful impact on humans irrespective of age, cast, creed, gender or the language they spoke. Today, when you see someone smoking or drinking on the screen a warning appears at the bottom of the TV screen. Smoking is injurious to health or Alcohol kills. 

In the 60s and 70s almost all the heroes and villains smoked on the screen. Cigarettes those days were a prop for the hero or the villain. Seeing their hero smoking on the screen many children decide to copy them. Can you guess the number of people who hit the bottle after loosing their love and become ‘Devadas’. Such was the influence of the movie Devadas in which Dilip Kumar was the hero.

This trend probably lead the marketers and advertisers to engage celebrities from film, cricket and other sports, to endorse their products. Today you have several channels of communication viz. Print and TV (hundreds of channels in English and all the local languages), radio( AM, FM and in all languages covering even the rural India), social media like LinkedIn, FB, Twitter, WhatsApp, Instagram and latest player Tik tok to promote your products. Till 60s there was only the print media and the radio. Short Ad films were made for screening in the cinemas. I vividly remember the black & white ad film for the hair cream, Brylcreem endorsed by Cricketer Farokh Engineer. By early 70s Doordarshan started DD channels in the four metros.

In-movie product placement was a natural option because of the influence of movies on families. Aston Martin, and Martini (SHAKEN not Stirred) in the James Bond Movies and the Vespa scooter used by Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn in the movie Roman Holiday are the earliest foreign language movies with in-movie product placements targeting global audience.

In the Indian context the most popular placement that comes to my mind was Rajdoot Bobby 175 bike in the RK Films’ movie (1972) by the same name Bobby. Bobby was special in many ways:

• Produced and directed by Raj Kapoor 
• Launching Rishi Kapoor as hero after his debut as a child star in Mera Naam Joker
• Launching Dimple Kapadia as heroine

The movie became an instant hit across India for all age groups and Bobby the bike, got a piggy ride on the movie and became popular. (The hero elopes with heroine Bobby in the bike)

After the success of Bobby, marketers found in-movie product placements an easy medium for product promotion, the 4th 'P' of Kotler’s Marketing. Products like Coke, Pepsi, ICICI Bank, Western India Money Transfer, Indel Money were placed in different movies. While the brand gets visibility many of marketers blindly accept the proposals without even thinking whether it will elicit any positive association for the brand. One such case was the 2003 Hindi movie ‘Bagbhan’, starring Amitabh Bachan, Hema Malini and Salman Khan in supporting role. The car showroom probably only looked at the super stars doing a shoot in their showroom and the showroom and the brand getting free visibility. The sequence was something like this:

An elderly couple enters the car showroom. As usual as per the brand sales process they are greeted and a sales consultant explains the features of the car and offers a test drive. The sales consultant insults the couple when he learns that they don't have any money to buy the car. At this stage Salman Khan, the dealer principal, who is the foster son of the couple enters and slaps the sales consultant. The movie was a box office hit. But I could never understand how the brand or the showroom could elicit any positive association.

Two years later 2005-06, another car showroom in Mysore, Karnataka where I was heading the operation. On a Sunday morning I was in the fish market when I got a call from the dealer principal in Bengaluru to rush to the showroom to meet some film crew. I rushed to the showroom. They wanted the showroom for half a day to do a shoot. The stars were Vishnuvardhan, Jayaprada and Darshan. I requested them to explain the scene. The director explained to me that they were remaking the Hindi movie Baghbhan in Kannada, ‘Ee Bandhana’ and they wanted to film the same car showroom scene in our facility.

I discussed the proposal with my boss and since he too had seen the Hindi movie he immediately declined. The film crew was rather shocked at our response. According to them we were rejecting a god given opportunity to showcase our showroom and the brand, that too free. The movie team did not stop there. They contacted the Head of Marketing of the OEM HeadQuarters at Delhi. Within half an hour I got a call from my boss asking me to allow them for the shoot. However, he had the courtesy to ask me the reason for my objection. Mysore was a traditional market and if the local people see their hero Vishnuvardhan being insulted in the showroom, they will stop visiting the showroom. And also the sales consultant being slapped by the showroom owner, was bad for the brand. And finally when the movie was released my fear was a point of discussion among the locals. Slowly, as usual people forgot the issue.

But there was one person who had witnessed the shoot who did not forget the incident. I knew this person since we had delivered a car earlier to him. He was a realtor. I saw him entering the showroom from the cabin. He was a hard core fan of Vishnuvardhan and on the second day of shooting he had brought a camera and took snaps with the hero and other stars (there was no Selfie those days).

I have a policy of attending 30% of sales and service customers which has helped us to achieve high SSI (Sales Satisfaction Index) and CSI (Customer Satisfaction Index) scores. I rushed down to attend this walk-in customer. The brand had a particular model car, very attractive with sporty looks, without much features and quite expensive. We had one in stock and were struggling to push it out. That was the car used for the shooting. I straight away took the customer to the car and explained to him the relationship of the car with Vishnuvardhan and the movie. Even the picture he had posed with Vishnuvardhan was in-front of this car. He was not happy with the scene in the movie,but It did not take much time to close the deal. Finally, I convinced myself even a negative scene could elicit a positive result!

The brand had an obsession for in-movie product placements and the Saif Ali -Rani Mukerji starrer 'Hum Tum' was such a movie.

Sometimes the marketer gets an opportunity to promote his products used by the movies crew without the knowledge of the marketer. I got such an opportunity while heading the operation of one the largest Mahindra dealerships in India. I was based out of Calicut, Kerala taking care of seven districts in North Kerala. I got the opportunity through a friend who advised me to watch the Malayalam movie, ‘Traffic’(Released in 2011). He just said, “From interval to the end your Scorpio is starring in the movie. See how best you can utilise the situation, for promotion”. The same day I managed to get 2 tickets and watched the movie. It was an edge of the seat thriller later remade in Hindi and all South-Indian languages.

When a superstar’s daughter needs a heart transplant, a dying journalist’s parents agree to help her by donating their son’s heart. But the challenge is to get the heart from Cochin to Palakkad in time. And the only way to expedite the surgery is by navigating a busy road amidst heavy traffic during peak hour to ensure that the donor's heart reaches the hospital in time for transplantation. The movie won the hearts of the audience and ran to packed houses for several weeks. 

The heart is being carried by a medical team and a cop, who had the experience of navigating through such traffic conditions as a driver to ministers, in a Scorpio. As rightly pointed out by my friend, the Scorpio is featured from interval till the end and I made the Scorpio the protagonist assisting in the success of the mission.

Our Marketing team quickly made a plan for two locations, Calicut and Trissur, got approval from the management.

THE ACTIVITY: 

• Made arches and decorations at both the cinemas

• Made Kiosk with banners and displayed the scorpio

• Booked tickets and distributed to prospects from our enquiry register

• Ad slides were displayed in the cinema before the movie stared and during the interval 

OUR COMMUNICATION WAS ‘YOU ARE WATCHING THE MAHINDRA SCORPIO IN ACTION, PLEASE CALL OR VISIT OUR SHOWROOMS AT CALICUT/TRISSUR FOR A GUEST DRIVE’

THE RESULT:

Unprecedented enquiries and bookings. 

WHAT MADE IT CLICK:

It was a Herculean task to take ‘the heart by road’ and by linking the Scorpio to the task and communicating to the customers the role of the vehicle in making the task a success was well received by the target audience.

REEL STORY AND REAL STORY:

Now, let me recount a similar instance in a very recent movie, ‘Good News’ with Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor. 

Akshay Kumar works for a leading European Car brand in Mumbai. The scene goes like this. A customer walks into the showroom with a child. The child cries incessantly not allowing the sales person to explain the car. Our hero walks in, gives a scale model toy car to the child. Having achieved the task of silencing the child, our hero tries to upsell a high end car to the customer. 

The child doesn’t approve of the car and insists on leaving the showroom. While the customer walks out of the showroom , our hero takes the car back from the child. I was reflecting on the very purpose of this scene for the brand. Are they not aware of the influence of children in purchase decisions. In this case the audience may not react, because it is Akshay Kumar. It is a reel situation……..but in a real situation? Would you as a car buyer be happy if a gift to your child is taken back?

THEN A REAL SITUATION:

Circa 2011, Bengaluru, Toyota showroom in Hebbal. I was heading the marketing operation. Sitting in my cabin I had a clear view of the showroom. We have a policy of taking care of the children coming with families. We pamper them with toys, chocolates or crayons, anything to make them comfortable. I came out of the cabin listening to a child crying . I saw a small girl must be 2 or 3 years old crying on the shoulders of an upset father and our consultant standing next to him unable to do anything. I noticed that the girl was pointing at the scale model cars displayed for the customers to choose the colour of the car. I ran to the store and quickly returned with a scale model of white Etios Liva and gave it to the girl. The father was on his way to the exit door. The child took the car, but did not stop crying. Then I noticed that she was pointing at the red car. 

Quickly I exchanged the white car for a red one. The little girl stopped crying and I could see a wide smile on her face while she was examining the car. The father put the child down reached for his wallet and took out some cash. “How much?” he asked. “It is a gift from Toyota for the child” I replied. Now that his daughter was busy studying the red car he sat down and looked at the sales consultant. I moved back to my cabin. After some time the sales consultant came into my cabin flashing the order booking form and the cheque.

Now sitting at home, locked down, I keep wondering 'can we have any such experiences in the new virtual or digital showrooms?'

Another product I came across is the Maruti Swift in the movie 'Bunty Aur Babli' starring Abhishek Bachan and Rani Mukerjee. In the feature film ‘Mere Dad Ki Maruti', Suzuki Ertiga is the central character. It was the first time, in-film placement has been taken to the extent where the name of the brand was in the title and the brand was able to seamlessly integrate with the content. Tanishq had successfully given a filmy glint to their special jewellery collection in the 2005 movie ‘Paheli’ starring Shahrukh Khan and Rani Mukherjee, 'Devdas' with Aishwarya Rai, Madhuri Dixit and Shahrukh Khan, 'Jodha Akbar' *ing Hrithik Roshan and Aishwarya Rai and 'Padmavat' *ing Deepika Padukone and Ranveer Singh. 

Another new platform I came across for product placements in the small screen is the digital or virtual hoarding (OOH) appearing in the TV serials with high TRP ratings. I have seen virtual hoardings in a hit Malayalam serial ‘Vanampadi’ running successfully in Asianet. 

The advantage of such virtual hoardings is that they look real and merge with the outdoor scene with high visibility and reach.

Read more of such stories in my forthcoming book……

(Image source: Google Images)