Jab We Sell

This has nothing to do with selling or buying of shares and has no relation with the share market. Any relation of words with those used in the share markets is purely coincidental.

This is about a movie. A movie that was a great hit. Of course the movie must be good in order to be a hit. But we know all good movies are not hit. And this 'okay' movie has achieved profits that can make any filmmaker jealous.

Actually this is not about the movie either. This is about marketing, about strategies and setting time frames of when to do what and how to earn the maximum possible money from the movie. This is about business. The business done in the film industry, and about the way it should be done.

Well, this is about 'Jab We Met'. A movie from which I was not hoping much when I went to Raghavendra, our only source of movies besides laptops. It was the first week and the publicity was such that movie was expected to be just time pass.

And that it really was. The movie did really well what it was expected to do - a good time pass, which gave the movie a good publicity through word of mouth. I mean, the results were exceptional in some way. Jab We Met was probably the only movie of the year that increased its collection after second week. Be it the masala filled Om Shanti Om or the touching Taare Zameen Par or the laugh riot Welcome, all have gone down on the box office, week after week. But Jab We Met was different from all these, increasing the number of viewers and thus profits.

On the other hand, the music score of the movie was already good and was being popular day by day. So no doubt the sale of audio CDs and cassettes was good, too.

And as soon as the theatres seemed to come to saturation, television started showing the 'coming soon' ads for the DVDs and VCDs. That too on Moserbaer, making it affordable for everyone, and since the movie came at a time when it was still fresh on people's mind, there were record sales of the DVDs and VCDs of the movie. The DVDs were promoted on TV with beautiful, touching advertisements that were showing less of movie and instead, were trying to move people through emotions of people.

I do not know whether these emotional ads added much to the sales but these were different from other movies' advertisements and people were noticing them.

And when everything was almost over, the box office, and the CDs and DVDs, the music and the movie, and when the movie was still 'new', the TV started showing advertisement for the 'television premier' of the movie. That is, the movie is gonna hit the idiot boxes this Sunday, which must have provided the producers with a few more crores as a hit movie is being aired so early.

I think the movie generated money in all the ways it could and that too in a short span of time. Probably because the strategists for the movie know that it's not an era of silver jubilee and golden jubilee and planned according to the short lifetime of current movies. I think the movie makers today should try to plan in such a manner that they are able to find maximum profits from all possible sources and for that, Jab We Met can be a great example.

Now, Expectations!!

The one lac magic is out. The most awaited car, Indione, Jeh, and finally Nano has come out. Now its turn of expectations. You must have read a lot bu now regarding the features and non-features of the magic car, but the question is, to what extent will the car be able to cope with the expectations of people.

Will the car be able to start another revolution in the country making cars as common in a few years as are cellphones today or will the one lac car be just an achievement to be written for the history books of automobiles?

Well, the answer depends, to a large extent, on the perfprmance of the car. If the car performs well, even for small distances, and if the security is enough, I very much hope that the car will be able to brong in a revolution as there would be a number of small families that would like to own a car rather than a bike.

Probably the best strategy would be to target the customers that were targetted a few years back by the Maruti Suzuki 800 under the 2599 scheme in collaboration with the State bank of India.

Anyways, what happens only time will tell. Till October, when the car is expected to hit the markets, we can only predict. And be proud of our country for launching the cheapest car of the world.

Bank to Bank

1969: 14 banks nationalised by the Indira Gandhi government.

1980: 6 more banks nationalised.

1994: Private banks like ICICI, HDFC, and UTI take off as a result of the then Prime Minister Narsimha Rao's liberelisation policy.

And since then, the number of banks has been increasing and today there are 19 nationalised banks, excluding State Bank of India and its associate banks whereas the number of private banks is almost 30, that include the foreign banks, Citibank, HSBC and Deutsch Bank.

With a number of banks providing good service, the competition among the banks is at its best now. Previously it was ICICI an HDFC banks which gave other banks a good competition. Especially ICICI bank came to the second spot in terms of total assets, just behind the State Bank of India.

Later, the competition grew fierce with other private banks also joining the race. But a new turn in the banking sector came when nationalised banks started to gear up themselves for the race. It was started by the Bank of Baroda when it changed its logo along with colors and established a series in June 2005. Then in May 2007, UTI Bank decided to go through a change of name and logo and soon it was Axis Bank.

And recently, Canara Bank joined the series. With the beginning of the 2008, Canara Bank turned a bright blue with two crossing triangles and a beautiful tagline 'Together We Can'. Mind Can.

And now the State Bank of India is all set to go through the merger that has been on cards for a long time. The largest bank of India, with more than 9500 branches, is all set to grow larger with the proposed mergers of its seven associate banks. If the mergers take place as expected, the bank will be South Asia's largest bank with more than 14,000 branches. The first merger, with the State Bank of Saurastra, may complete this month itself.

Ad. No Mad.

Seen the new Airtel advertisement in which u don't understand a word? The one in which two little boys play football on the border of two countries. You need not think which language they are talking in. But you get the message. Talking, we can overcome all sorts of borders. A beautiful ad that indicates the new heights our advertising industry is reaching.

Another beautiful series of ads is being shown by Vodafone. The ads about alerts. I especially liked the ad on art of living alerts in which a wife is throwing cushion on her husband and every time he silently gives it back to her and finally the anger of the lady goes. A beautiful ad with no words again.

Yet another advertisement comes from Canara Bank in which a typical South Indian old lady is reading, trying and speaking Punjabi words all the time and greets her Punjabi daughter-in-law (or daughter-in-law to be) in Punjabi when she meets her for the first time. The ad tells again how boundaries are going and the world is getting smaller.

Overall, it seems that we are getting more good ads than before. Hope the standards get still better. I'll be telling you more, but after a 'commercial break'. :)

Harshit