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Marketing and Promotions in Bollywood >> 107

sponsor.” As we drove out of Film City, the marketing manager, who had not
said much during the meeting, put the discussion to rest. “You all are look-
ing at it from the wrong angle,” she began, turning to face the three of us in
the backseat of the taxi. “Look, there is no guarantee that the film will be a
hit. I agree. But one thing is for sure—every television promo will have to
include at least a few shots of the office space in the film, which will have our
name. And that matters. I can use those TRPs (television ratings points) too
when I have to justify why we spent so much money making a deal with this
film.” The editor and the art director had to agree. “Yeah, you’re right,” the
art director acknowledged, going on to say: “And you know what, it’s worth
building a relationship with this producer.”
A few days later, I met Bhatt at a Café Coffee Day outlet in Andheri West,
down the road from a major multiplex and a few blocks from the offices of
Yash Raj Films and other prominent film and television companies. “That
meeting is a great example of how things are changing,” he began, before
providing an explanation of what happens when a producer or direc-
tor approaches Madison Mates for assistance with branding and product
placements:

Once we have an agreement from a brand, say a brand wants to invest Rs.
30 lakhs (3 million) in a film, we then ask the producer to tell us the exact
scenes in which the brand will be integrated. We put that on paper and
lock in a triparty agreement, which includes the producer, the agency, and
the brand. We ensure that at no point in time is the brand mistreated . . .
we have various clauses for that. We also handle payments and it is in
three phases usually—once you lock in an agreement, you pay 50 percent
as advance, and then the shoot happens. We show the brand the edits,
where and how the brand has been placed. And if the brand is satisfied,
we then deliver the next 25 percent to the producer. If changes are needed,
we negotiate. And the final 25 percent comes in when the film is released.
It’s all very structured. Some people, of course, don’t work with scripts. In
those cases, we try to work things out between brands and directors or
producers.

These contracts and agreements, always flexible enough to accommodate
long-established practices in the film industry, were also supplemented with
purportedly empirical research reports that sought to establish how a spe-
cific case of product placement benefited both the film and the brand. Even
before we met, Bhatt had suggested I take a look at brief research summa-
ries that MBA-trained professionals at Madison Mates generated on a regular