Article by Allu Sirish
Finally, some new age marketing is coming into movies. The producers of Varudu, Universal Media have tied up with popular saree retailer Kalamandir to create a special range of wedding clothes, based on the movie – for South Indian weddings. Called the “Kalasutra collection”, most of them are aimed at the vaduvu (bride) as women are the brand’s biggest audience. The brand ran a ‘roadblock’ campaign on Friday with full-page in ads in all leading Telugu and English dailies in Andhra Pradesh. The estimated cost of this campaign alone would be Rs 120-150 lakhs. If the brand is spending this kind of money, I am sure the retail business is really big and can afford these kind of budgets. The Telugu film industry, doesn’t recognize “co-branded advertising” as a form of marketing. Any ad that has the movie’s logo, is considered an ad by the producer. So, the campaign of Kalasutra collection does not have a logo of the movie, but cleverly plays on the varudu (groom) and marriage theme. The campaign was executed by the movie’s publicist Srinivas and AP Media Pvt Ltd, an upcoming marketing agency in Hyderabad. Incidentally, Srinivas is the publicist of Geetha Arts and Allu Arjun. Have a look at the ads, click to enlarge.
But, in our good old Telugu film industry, one of the “industry peddalu” (industry biggies) dint approve of this and launched a complaint with the Producer’s Council which had an ‘Emergency Meeting’ to discuss how the producer D.V.V Dhanayya had violated the rules. There are a lot of restrictions in the Telugu film industry, when it comes to marketing. I have written about it in depth here (click to read). Inspite of the Censor process and release tensions, the Producer answered to the committee. Most of the ‘new age’ producers who are regularly making films were empthazing the producer and asked the Council to update its archaic rules. The producer was asked to discontinue the campaign and not to issue further ads. I sincerely wish the Telugu film industry raises above all such petty stuff & becomes a progressive industry. After all, this is place I am going to be working for the next 40 years.
