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Marketing and Promotions in Bollywood >> 81

the songs are really good, there are foreign locations, it’ll definitely be a
hit, take my word for it]. It doesn’t work anymore to say you feel the film
will do well. You have to be able to talk about target audiences, key attri-
butes of the film, what your positioning is, and so on. Which is why people
like myself, a marketing man with an MBA from IIM-Lucknow (Indian
Institute of Management), are at Yashraj Films. And let me tell you, the
marketing department here has quickly become an important part of the
company.

Tripathi’s justification of his role in one of the most prominent companies
in the industry, and his argument that established modes of film promotion
and marketing were no longer viable, was not just self-promotion. Without
exception, all the journalists, television executives, public relations agents,
and marketing executives at film production companies that I spoke with
emphasized that marketing was now a site and practice that was profession-
alized and highly valued in the film industry. With producers and distribu-
tors willing to allocate over 15 to 20 percent of their budgets to marketing
and promotions, a change that was noted and commented on extensively in
the trade-press, there was no doubt that this was a crucial shift.
Until the mid-1990s, the production and circulation of paratexts for
Hindi-language films was a largely uncomplicated affair overseen by a pub-
licist responding to directions from the producer and director of the film.
As the media and entertainment landscape in India was transformed dur-
ing the 1990s and early 2000s, authoring hype became a far more complex
affair. Promoting and marketing a Bollywood film acquired new dimen-
sions: tailoring promotional videos for various television channels, crafting
innovative making-of features, negotiating spots for film stars on different
television programs, designing websites for each film, coordinating online
chat sessions involving transnational fan communities, contests and games
for various mobile phone platforms, and so on. These changes were reflected
in the credit sequence of Bollywood films as well. While the censor board
certificate remained in place, it no longer cut to the usual sequence of titles
and names of cast and crew members. Virtually every film now included
details of partnerships or tie-ins with television channels, radio stations,
dot-com and mobile phone companies, and an array of fashion labels and
other commodities. Further, the figure of the “publicist” or “publicity coor-
dinator” was now accompanied, if not replaced, by names of advertising
and marketing companies such as Imagesmiths, Madison Mates, and Leo
Burnett. Authoring hype was no longer the province of the producer and
the director. It was clear that a new group of marketing and public relations