Do promotions really add value to the box-office performance of a film?

As an audience, what drives you to the cinema hall: the theatrical trailer bundled with a couple of good songs or stars going on an over-drive to promote their films? Promotions make sense only when they are backed by a good trailer. They act as a secondary factor to excite the audience as first and foremost would always be the trailer.

Film PR is basically a PeRception building game wherein their task is not just to project the film as a hit (irrespective of the actual result) but also create a fear among the producers that the film would fail if it is not promoted.

Although the task of promotion is to communicate the arrival of a film, what is does more than often is to drive an agenda of film's success. There is often an attempt to project films as a hit as producers often claim via press releases that their film is already in profits owing to sale of satellite, music and distribution rights.

99 out of 100 times such press release indicate that the makers are not confident of their product and want to create a perception of the film being a box-office hit. So yeah, film PR does help in window dressing a situation but that’s for a short span as truth eventually prevails! Isn't it? The promotions might lure a person to a theatre but cannot assure of the person liking the film.

Coming back to point, if promotions actually made a huge difference, there would have been several hit films in 2016 as compared to merely 16 genuinely successful films. There is often an argument that promotions play a significant role in recording a better opening weekend number and content speaks in the long run.

However, it is quite easy to break this perception as all the record openers of this industry were benefitted by the presence of a superstar, reasonably liked trailer and at least one chart-buster song! While superstar films are bound to open well without promotions, even the ones starring the gen-next have the same pattern. Don’t believe us? Let’s try and justify!

Tamasha marked the return of Deepika Padukone and Ranbir Kapoor after the recording breaking performance of Yeh Jaawani Hai Deewani. The film was promoted like there is no tomorrow as the star-cast did several city tours, travelled by train, made appearance on all possible reality shows. At all promotional events, the lead paired hoped to recreate the Yeh Jaawani Hai Deewani magic.

But what happened next? The film recorded a below par opening of Rs 10.87 crore which was around 50 % lower than the lead pair’s last film. Despite being all over the place, the film failed to get the audiences excited as the theatrical trailer had nothing new to offer and highlighted a dark undertone which turned off a section of audience.

On the flip side, a film like Roy, having a lesser known star-cast, recorded opening of Rs 10.40 crore which is similar to Tamasha. And this, despite the fact that, Ranbir Kapoor didn’t eventually promote the film and billed his part as a guest appearance whenever he was asked to speak about it. The reason for the opening was simple. The music of the film was a rage amongst the youth which got them excited about the film. Although the fate of Roy was worse than Tamasha, it did embark onto a very good start.

While content does the talking in long run, it is the trailer, music and face-value that helps the film take a good initial. Is it really necessary to indugle in on the face promotional activity just to be in the news?

Let’s see which Bollywood actor takes the brave move to opt for subtle and controlled promotions thereby breaking a major myth that exists in this industry!

Your thoughts?