Top Gun: Maverick

By now, almost everyone interested in the Top Gun sequel knows it is a good movie. Well, I think it is a super good movie, great actually, and I would like to watch it again. I was 4 years old when Top Gun was released in 1986, so yeah, missed it then. No way I am missing it now. Plus I like Tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly.

As a Marketing Communication Consultant, this post is my analysis of the observations on the movie promotion and release in Mumbai. If I apply Project Management Stages to the entire promotional campaign so far I have observed, then I would say that all the promotional activities were very well conceptualized, planned, executed and monitored. It is yet to close, the last stage in a project management job, as the movie is just released.

The Event/PR/Marketing/Communication team/s, a few were visible in the background in the UK premiere videos, timed every aspect of the event very well. From the choice of the location for the event to the red carpet Top Gun themed décor to the Photo op sites to the selection of right angles for the Press to click pictures and take interviews—all was probably studied in detail prior to the event/s, hence well executed. To have very important people attending an event alongside ensuring everything goes as intended, is a lot of hard work.

Top Gun: Maverick trailer launch, interviews on the most watched talk shows, various events at different geographical locations, press coverage, promotions on various social media pages/channels, Official Music Video: Lady Gaga – Hold My Hand (From Top Gun: Maverick), the launch of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One trailer, Top Gun Maverick Microsoft Flight Simulator and Air Combat 7 Xbox game…what I see is an excellent marketing strategy with maximum utilization of all the resources involved. And considering time as the main resource, it was a very beautifully choreographed marketing campaign. Great work team!

This for sure is going to be one of the PR Case Studies to be discussed in my class—a great example of Integrated Marketing Communication, which utilized both the Traditional and New Age Media to reach the defined audience.

Now, in Mumbai, I noticed two digital screens at Juhu Circle (recently launched), one of the prime and expensive locations for the OOH media exhibit in the city, displaying the movie poster on both the screens. Besides, the Malls have OOH display (Print and Digital) of the movie poster. There wasn’t any Photo Op installation in the theatre as generally observed at the time of a Marvel movie release–something that people like to click pictures against and upload on their social media pages.

We (my friend and I), chose PVR Cinema at the Infinity Mall Andheri West (close to both our residences) to watch the movie yesterday, Saturday, 28^th May 2022, morning show – 11:40 am in a D-Box Screen. Well, we reached late, both of us, and by the time we reached the Screen 3 door it was National Anthem time (around 11.50 am and thanks to the advertisements, we did not miss the beginning of the movie). Post which we were seated followed by two more advertisements: First one was of an upcoming Bollywood movie followed by the next one – Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One trailer. And then the movie began…loved every bit of it! Planning to watch again, hopefully.

Now coming back to the observations part, the theatre was not as full as I expected it to be. Only the top four rows had people—age group 28 to 55 years almost all relishing popcorn – it was cheese and caramel mix for us. There are shows scheduled at 6 am and 8.50 am. I wonder if 11.40 am was low on the audience count, then what about the earlier shows? I should have checked the seat occupancy for all shows for yesterday, which I did not, so can’t comment on that. The tickets were booked a week before on bookmyshow.com by my friend. Hence, I missed on that analysis. Today, a Sunday, on the app, the afternoon shows of Top Gun: Maverick indicate fast filling, yet the late evening show isn’t all booked, which ideally should have been the case. In comparison, other movie shows presently indicate higher number of seats booked.

There could be many reasons for this; some that I could think of include…

• Fear of infection—the pandemic has scarred our memories forever
• Extreme heat, the city is presently suffering from
• It is May month – vacation time as schools reopen next week
• Higher ticket prices
• Inclination of the youngsters towards Marvel characters as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has some very good reviews
• Bollywood movie Bhool Bhulaiyaa 2 is presently running on screens and is a very good movie (we watched the evening show yesterday) with lower ticket prices
• Tendency to watch movies on apps like Prime Video and Netflix (the popular ones – I had watched Top Gun on Prime Video as I said earlier, I had missed it in the theatres then and on cassettes or DVDs)
• Physical offices have started and people are getting used to travelling again post two years of Work From Home scenario, hence weekends are relaxing-at-home-days now
• Ongoing cricket matches, could be, not necessarily a reason not to visit cinema
• Demand versus Supply: Through promotional activities, demand could have been generated. But in the absence of that the supply, as in the number of shows, considering the ongoing and upcoming movie releases, is high. Say if there are six shows scheduled in a day on more than one screen, with three having 20 percent occupancy and the remaining with 80 percent occupancy, an average of the six would be 50 percent occupancy. Now, if there were four to six shows but on selected screens and selected timings, then the occupancy would have been 100 percent. A movie as big as this for sure has good advertisers. However, the question is about the occupancy of the shows, and for the advertisers, the exposure of the ads to the expected number of people in the audience. Study of the data generated possibly could answer these questions.

So, that’s about it. Wishing good luck to the entire Top Gun Team!

Until next, take care!

…Ashu Bolar
ashubolar@gmail.com

Thank You For Your Time. But You Wasted Mine.

As the economy rises from the crisis, the job portals now have some good profiles posted. At a slow pace, but you get interview calls these days. Now, if you are really looking forward to a job change, then you would go for the interview.

Yes, interview. Let’s talk about the interview session. If it goes well, you are happy, but keep speculating why they did not call you back (which is not unusual these days.) If it went bad, you will crib and sulk till you appear the next.

I recently had an interesting interview for the post of Assistant Brand Manager. The interviewer was Head – Marketing. After 20 minutes of HR discussion and paper exchange and waiting for 40 minutes, I finally meet this person. The interview goes on for around 25 minutes and through out the interview either he snaps at me or the vice versa. The initial five minutes was annoying, but got interesting over the following fifteen minutes (at least at my end).

Now what went wrong? When you work in a team, at times you tend to talk as WE did, WE achieved, WE… and some more We’s. This person was like, “You are using ‘WE’, what have you done as ‘I’? I have a 300 slide presentation indicating what I have done as ‘I’ in the last two years and probably more than 3000 slides portfolio and several publications for the last 6 years. The irony was, on the whiteboard in his cabin, in huge black fonts, the expansion of the word ‘TEAM’ was written in a very clear writing.

Like seriously dude??? 😛

There where many mini snap Q&As, but the final was interesting, “Besides going through the organisation website and internet research, you should have done more homework on the organisation?” (The company website is incomplete. No Social Media Presence. Barely any information when you Google it. And I understand that this is why they need a brand manager in first place.) This time my answer to his stupid remark was a question, “And how do you do that?” In the 21^st century, the man is expecting the candidate to chitchat and find about the organisation; or was I suppose to call Holmes and Dr. Watson?

Being old school is fine, but being ancient is unacceptable, especially, if you are in charge of the branding segment of an organisation. Digital media is ‘the media’ today—with which your presence can be felt globally despite you being located in just a corner of a country. Without a complete web presence, you are on your way towards extinction and will be fossilized soon. You may be an old and established service firm with an excellent word-of-mouth publicity, but with the competition around, just PR is not a sufficient promotional means. As a Head Marketing achieving sales target is great, but branding is a totally different ball game. No doubt both are interdependent, but applying sales principles to branding will not work most of the times—this is what I got to learn from the 25 minutes snip-snap session. Though we departed cordially, I really wanted to tell him, “Thank you for your time. But you wasted mine.”

However, there is no point crying over the time wasted. You will always get to learn something from an interview – be it good or bad. You learn by wining, but sometimes you learn more by losing. It is part of life. I have decided to apply what I have learnt to my work…and also to be prepared for clever as well as brainless prehistoric questions for my next interview! 🙂

…Ashu Bolar

Mouth Marketing :)

The other day, two office boys were having a discussion and one of them said:

“Arey, woh to mouth marketing se aage badha.”

(It progressed as a result of mouth marketing.)

I know what mouth watering is, but mouth marketing to me was a new terminology, and the sound of it was too hilarious. 😀

What he actually meant was Word Of Mouth Marketing (WOMM). WOMM is an unpaid form of oral or written communication.

Today, organisations spent millions on various modes of advertising. But still word of mouth publicity has a strong grip on marketing. No matter how much you advertise, WOMM can either boost up your brand or kill your brand.

With the advent of newer means of communication like the Internet and then the social networking sites, today WOMM has become all the more powerful. It takes seconds for anything to go viral – be it positive or negative. (If negative, then it is milliseconds! 🙂 )

When a brand is a product, to maintain a strong WOM promotion is still not difficult if the manufacturing process is accurate. However, if the brand is a service provider, then to constantly maintain a good WOM publicity can be a challenge. Satisfied consumers will always have good reviews. But one unsatisfied customer can ruin the entire brand image. Because these unhappy customers not just speak but write offensive comments on web pages, and once this process sets in, it is very difficult to have a control over it and extremely difficult to erase it.

Indeed, mouth marketing ;), I mean WOMM is still an essential tool for marketing. Personally, I feel organisations before spending millions on advertising, should first ensure that the product or service they offer is flawless. If so, then I think WOMM can do wonders and save some big bucks that can be utilised elsewhere probably for a good cause.

…Ashu Bolar