Publicity and marketing have played an increasingly important role in the success of recently launched Bollywood movies be it the Dabangg and Dhoom series or Dangal. With film producers carefully crafting a strategy for launch, often matching the release date with festivals, the main goal is to get maximum earnings in the initial crucial days. Creating a buzz and cashing on it before the audience can pass their verdict is a sure shot strategy to get the return on investment.

Rajinikanth and Akshay Kumar’s 2.0 is making headlines for many reasons. The movie with a budget of Rs 543 crores is claimed to be one of the most expensive Bollywood films ever made.

The movie is said to be created in 25 different VFX studios and employed 1000 VFX artists. The success of a movie relies on its branding strategy to some extent and for this reason the marketing team of 2.0 has left no stone unturned to come up with an equally amazing branding strategy.

As a distance MBA student keen on knowing the vital aspects of branding, 2.0 is a hallmark example to learn how marketing works today.  

Let’s look at why 2.0 is a master class in the art of branding

Source: YouTube

Augmented Reality in the first look poster launch

Augmented Reality is a buzzword in itself today. So it made complete sense to employ a futuristic technology for the first look poster launch of 2.0. The marketing team of 2.0 exploited this technology to conduct an interview of Chitti (played by Rajinikanth) taken by Karan Johar. The interview took place on a huge screen placed on stage in Mumbai. This marketing gimmick drew the attention of millions of social media users as well as etched its place as a top headline in news channels and newspapers for days to come.

Source: Marketing Journo

They went international and how!

Source: Marketing Journo

Rajinikanth took on Hollywood skies to mark 2.0’s presence on a global stage. Bollywood movies maximize their earnings by releasing the movie internationally and cash on Indian fans living outside India. A massive 100-foot tall hot air balloon flaunting 2.0’s poster was released over the Hollywood signage in Los Angeles.

If that was not enough, the balloon travelled from LA to QuickChek Festival in New Jersey. It’s set on an inter-continental journey to Europe, Dubai, Australia as well as South East Asian countries finally coming home to India.

Apart from catching international attention, this extravagant publicity campaign matches with the expectations from the movie.

The best use of Facebook?

Students doing a distance MBA in Finance will find it interesting to know that the marketing budget on digital innovations have gone up from 5-8% to 15-18% from 2015 to 2017.

2.0 unveiled the film teaser in September 2018 garnering over 32.4 million hits on social media within a day. The film scored 24.8 million views on YouTube alone. It also touched 4.1 million viewers on Facebook and 3.5 million viewers on Instagram to make its presence felt on social media.

The marketing team for the film also created an excitement chart for the trailer’s launch to publicize Rajini fan’s excitement for the upcoming movie.

The world is your classroom

Students doing distance education courses can learn marketing lessons from real-world examples like 2.0 and come up with their own unique concepts and ideas for marketing and turn learning into fun.