Retail in the Indian Entertainment Industry

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2012, has gone on to become the largest-grossing Punjabi film of all time. - Eega, a Telugu sci-fi thriller created history by recording the highest per screen average collections at the US box office over the weekend of its release, more than some well-known Bollywood and Hollywood films. - Gabbar Singh, the Telugu remake of Dabangg has grossed over 150 crore INR. - Nanban, the Tamil remake of 3 Idiots has collections of over 165 crore INR.

Increased digitisation leading to wider release, higher collections The Indian film industry is witnessing rapid digitisation of cinema screens in the country and is enabling film producers to simultaneously release their films across the geography in the first week itself. As per our industry discussions, about 70% of the screens currently operational in the country are already digitised and the industry expects the remaining to be digitised by the end of 2013. One of the largest service providers, UFO Moviez India alone has over 3000 digital cinema installations throughout the country. Increasing digitisation has meant that even smaller films that were earlier unable to have a wider release on account of high physical print costs, are now able to occupy several screens and across the country. This has translated into increasing box office revenues for such films. Therefore, even though Ek Tha Tiger released in nearly 3,300 screens, From Sydney with Love a much smaller film with an unknown new cast was released across nearly 900 screens. This was unheard of four or five years ago, when only a big budget film would release in around 1000 screens.

Films increasingly using social media and other innovative marketing forms Social media has increasingly become an important tool for film producers and marketers to promote films and gauge audience reaction before the release of a film. Producers are increasingly releasing the promos and trailers of their films on sites like YouTube. Apart from that, they are also actively creating web-pages and accounts on sites such as Twitter and Facebook to create further buzz around the film.

With top film channels such as Star Gold, Set Max, Zee and Colors constantly competing to secure the satellite rights of large releases, film producers have India Entertainment increased bargaining power leading to higher costs being witnessed. Production houses are capitalising on this in order to recover a significant proportion of the costs before their films hit theatres. Agneepath was able to recover close to 60% of its production costs through the sale of its satellite rights. However, in some cases, airing of films on television soon after their theatrical release has a negative impact on box office revenues.

4. Anticipated Future Scenario

The Indian industry is projected to grow from 95.8 billion INR in 2011 to 153.6 billion INR in 2016 showing a CAGR of 9.9% for the next five years after registering a growth of 9.4% in 2011. We expect the following key developments in the next few years: Indian box office expected to overtake the UK and Australia markets in the next few years. The Indian box office is among the fastest growing markets in the world next only to China among markets greater than 15 billion INR. It is expected that in the next few years, the Indian market will surpass the UK market and will be the fifth largest market in the world by 2016. This growth in numbers is primarily driven by the increasing number of big budget films which are not only looking to tap the local market, but are also willing to spend to expand their reach in the overseas market where ATP is higher than in India. The domestic box office is estimated to continue its upward trend and grow from the current size of 68.0 billion INR in 2011 to 112.0 billion INR in 2016. Overseas collections are expected to grow from 8.5 billion INR in 2011 to 13.8 billion in 2016.

5. Film Marketing

Good film + Good Marketing = Hit Film

Whatever you do don’t fool yourself. Create a script that even when narrated excites you and the listener about the way it will be treated on screen. Visualize it as a pure delight for any cinema-goer. At the end of the day, do what Philip Kotler says: “Good Product, Good Marketing, Good Returns

”The film marketing strategy for any good film can be best described based on the 6Ps of marketing, namely:

5.1 Product: It is time and again that we keep coming back to this. The base for a well-defined film marketing strategy starts with the film itself. A well researched script with a well-woven screenplay is where the core of the film-marketing strategy for a film should be invested. It is not about who sees the film only, it is also about catering to a definitive audience who watches your film in theatres, and more often than not, more than once. While other elements of marketing focus on attracting these audiences it is this aspect of marketing i.e. ‘the product’ that aims at satisfying these audiences.

5.2 Placement: With the first element satisfied we move on the element that makes the first element possible. It is true that an audience will be satisfied only when they are attracted to go into the theatre to watch the film. It is ‘placement’ that accounts for attracting the audience into crowding the theatre. ‘Placement’ as a term is used to describe the modus-operandi of placing the communication and promotion strategy of the film on to media and non-media platforms available in the industry today.

There is a complete media-mix that should be put into place usually 15% to 25% of the production cost of the film is invested into the marketing of the film in Bollywood. But then there are films like Lagaan, Boom, Out of Control, Khel and others who have spent as much as 40% of their production cost on marketing. But only Lagaan out of all these films became a super-hit and needles to point out that that had a lot to do with the central theme of the film.

Today it makes perfect sense to collaborate with one or more media partners in order to ensure maximum focused publicity of your film through certain guided platforms.

5.3 Positioning: The entire media, marketing and communication strategy of the film depends on the positioning of the film. Positioning is that particular slot in the mind of the audience that the film positions itself in. This kind of positioning has a lot to do with how well defined your target-audience is.

The time-consuming and highly complex ordeal of pin-pointing the target- audience is something that a good film marketer should take care of in the conceptualisation stage. The film by and large should appeal to the sensibilities of