Tag Archives: India

Sidhwani Goes to Hollywood?

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Updated Bollywood Marketing

It used to be that when Indian filmmakers wanted to promote one of their new movies, they would just get a “giant, hand-painted poster, a television or cinema trailer and the pulling power of a star actor.” These days much more is needed. And Ritesh Sidhwani, producer of the upcoming movie “Hrithik Roshan film Zindagi Milegi Na Dobara” (You Only Live Once), is not about to be left behind.

RS Phones Home

Some years ago it was ET phoning home. Now Ritesh Sidhwani is using a similar technique, but not in his movie; rather as a way of promoting it. Mobile phones are the new way of marketing movies and that is what Sidhwani is trying to do. This move is being implemented through a joint collaboration between Aircel (a leading mobile phone company in India) and Excel Entertainment film studio. The venture will result in two three-minute trailers which will be sent (for free) to the phone company’s 55 million subscribers. Since India is anyway the “world’s fastest-growing cellular market and the second largest after China,” (boasting 752.2m mobile phone subscribers at the end of 2010) this new marketing method seems like a slam dunk.

Sidhwani is already extremely hopeful that this new method will yield excellent results. He claims that by utilizing this technology he has been better able to engage in “more targeted marketing for films.” This is very helpful in today’s ever-increasingly competitive environment when there are so many diverse types of entertainment battling for their share of the market, which has decreased by 20 percent over the last three years. Sidhwani claimed that it is bound to work great since “mobile reach is much wider,” with everyone (especially the younger crowd) anyway watching Internet promos. There has been an increase of 22.6% year-on-year of Internet subscribers, with 10.99m having access to a broadband connection (an increase of 40% from 2010). It is predicted that a staggering 82% of India will be mobile-phone-clad in just three years’ time.

Bollywood “Likes” Facebook

As well as the mobile phone industry, it seems Bollywood is taking it all a step further. The movie is set to have a Facebook page. Clearly the industry is headed in “movie marketing to the next level.” It is honing in on where people are going in 2011 and responding extremely well to it. That has to be good for Bollywood business.

Diamond De Beers Deplete?

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De Beers – the world’s largest miner and diamond supplier – may be heading for a depletion in sales this year. According to its marketing arm Diamond Trading Company (DTC) a “slowdown” is expected in the second quarter,” but there is hope that the industry in India will increase by 20 percent, according to Varda Shine, the company’s CEO. That would be good news if not being compared to the growth there last year which reached 31 percent. India is the world’s largest diamond exporter so this fact of course will impact a company like De Beers.

Of course, this data is only just estimates and forecasts and thus not even close to 100 percent accurate. Shine is still hoping for “a double digit growth in this industry in India and China as well every year.” In addition, DTC prices have increased significantly – more than 300 percent following the 2008 economic crisis. One diamond trader who chose to remain anonymous pointed out that “it has increased by an average by 15 per cent to 20 per cent during the first quarter, following a rise of 27 per cent through the whole of 2010, while sales increased by 10 per cent to approximately $1.75 billion during the three months.”

So perhaps after all despite some figures pointing somewhat to the contrary, diamonds will remain a girl’s best friend in the future. In addition, since there are so many different figures and opinions, it is almost impossible to predict the future of the industry.

World Cup Dirty Tricks

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It seems that nothing can remain untouched these days. It’s all about money and that doesn’t change with the India- Pakistan cricket World Cup semifinal scheduled for 2 days’ time. Indeed there have already been three arrests by the Chandigarh police for attempts being made to “black-market” tickets for the event. The mark-up was somewhat absurd; on a ticket of Rs.250 and Rs.500, sales were pitched at Rs.56,000!

It was a little much. The police set up a trap to catch them and it worked. Now there is an interrogation taking place to determine exactly what happened and to make an example out of these people to perhaps deter people from trying this trick in the future.

Making Money on the Winning Team

These money-seekers might have tried to make their dough in a more traditional way, as has been done since time immemorial with hedging bets on which team will win. Is this so easy to do? Well, if you look at what has happened in the past between the two teams you will find that from the 199 matches played between the two in world cup matches, India has a 4-0 lead over Pakistan. While this makes for seemingly good news for those who want to place bets, you can never really tell and that is what makes such a gamble so exciting as it could go either way.

Whatever happens on Wednesday, let’s hope no one else gets arrested and greed doesn’t get in the way too much of what is ultimately meant to be a lot of good, sporting fun and no match-fixing occurs which is, according to an article in the Wall Street Journal, a fear of Pakistan Interior Minister Rehman Malik, due to what some players from his country did last year in what became known as the “spot-fixing” scandal.