Chennai Express: Marketing Success

Let me start by asking you a question, what is similar between Bollywood movies and Indian one day cricket?

Of course there could be thousands of analogies that could be drawn here, but the answer I am looking at is that, there have been only 2 double centuries so far in both the places, and by 2 of the most loved people in both the fields (Sachin & Sehwag, and Aamir & SRK).   

Ok lets come to the point, why Chennai Express succeeded the way it did, well no body is fool to deny SRK’s ability to pull crowds inside theatres, neither the popularity of Rohit Shetty movies could be challenged, but it was more than art which was in play here.

It is widely known fact that now a day’s movie do their main business in the first 3 days, so to help themselves with the initial hype, and protect themselves with the effect of any negative reviews that may hamper the business of the movie in coming days, the movie producers came out with 3500 prints, this is a record for the higest number prints for any hindi movie, more prints meant more screens and more houseful boards.

But that was not the only strategy, the name of the movie played the primary role in attracting the audience from south India, additionally a large chunk of dialogues in the movie were in Tamil, making it an additional attraction for the Tamil speaking audience, don’t forget that Tamil Nadu as a state is star crazy and regional movie do business in volumes that can give a run for the money to hindi biggies; but the icing on the cake was definitely the ‘lungi dance’ song in honor of Rajnikant. There is  a large fan base of Rajnikant who are ready to wait for even a week outside the ticket window to get the first day first show ticket for his movies, and definitely this song would have made crowds pour into theatres, it must be noted that Chennai Express has done more business in this territory (Tamil Nadu - Keral) than any other hindi movie till date, so it should not surprise you if in near future you find names of other cities in movie titles with song dedications to local super heroes.

Just for fun let assume there is a Hollywood movie, starring Tom Cruis and Angelina Joile, with 15% dialogues in hindi and a item number by Tom Cruise praising none other than Mr Amitabh Bachchan, wouldn’t non-english speaking audience will be intrigued, well at least I would.