Strategies behind the success of Sanju. Rajkumar Hirani-directed Sanju starring Ranbir Kapoor as Sanjay Dutt though released in a non-festival and non-vacation period attracted audiences more than expected and became the biggest hit of the year alongside finding a place among the top five in box office history. The film that continues to run in theaters despite the entry of Dharak, could garner over Rs. 333 crore at the box office.
Rajkumar Hirani films are famous for content but this very film derives a fair part of success from its disruptive marketing that rewrote so many rules of film promotion.
Regarding this movie, a popular actor like Sanjay Dutt falls short of being an icon or poster boy of Bollywood but it does not impact the rating of the film. The challenge with Sanjay’s biopic was to create a campaign that invokes curiosity and remains truthful. Film producers notched up many firsts in the process.
What are the marketing strategies that worked best for Sanju to gross Rs 120 crore in the opening? A must considering thing is that and here us answer for that curiosity:
1# Sanju’s teaser viral got viral
The producers of Sanju guarded all looks of Ranbir Kapoor, as an unbelievable look-alike of the renowend bollywood star Sanjay Dutt, till the time of the release of the teaser on 24th of April. Shikha Kapur, chief marketing officer maintains that Sanju was the No.1 trend on Twitter, Facebook & YouTube as well, alongside 2 lakh searches on Google in 24 hours only.
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Sanju teaser was launched on social platforms and Hotstar followed by the biggest ever television roadblock across 80 channels over 2 days. The teaser reached more than 150 million viewers across the world, making it the widest viewed teaser ever.
2# Fans were left in a limbo for a long time
It took time period of one month between the release of the teaser and the trailer and all promotional material, including songs, was deliberately held back in between, contrary to traditional Bollywood wisdom believeing in bombarding audiences from all sides till the release of a film. The trailer of the movie started opening up new facets of it into the campaign. It touched upon several flaws & controversies in Sanjay Dutt’s life alongside bringing the relationship between a father and a son to light.
3# Everything was digital
It was a digital first campaign with launch of both the teaser and the trailer of Sanju launched on digital first. Kapur says, “The campaign was fronted by social platforms to build conversations and create an organically strong intent to watch the film,”.
4# The don’ts of marketing Sanju
There were more don’ts than do’s in the marketing campaign of Sanju, like there were no TV or radio interviews of the star cast or Rajkumar Hirani till the last 10 days. With this marketing starategy, Kapoor said “We wanted the audience to experience an unadulterated journey from teaser to trailer and hence all information outside the context of these two assets was timed for closer to release,”.
5# Most Sanju songs released only after the film
Contrary to the traditon of the films more of the Sanju’s songs were released after the screening of the film. Har maidan fatah and Main bhi badhiya, were the songs that kept the traditional way of the release of the songs.
