The last month or so has seen some films which have been released without much promotion and the failure of these films has been blamed on the lack of promotion. Actually its not the failure but the collections being so low blamed on weak promotion so the thought is that films like Mission Raniganj and Ganapth would have got better opening collections if they were promoted more. 

The fact remains this is far from the truth as promotion did not help much before the pandemic and its the same today. A classic example is OMG 2 and Mission Raniganj where both films were not promoted but one managed to open and the other did not and both had Akshay Kumar. These films like Leo (Hindi) and 12th Fail had no promotion but both manged to bat more than they were worth on the first day itself as they had some interest among the respectiive target audience however small that may be.

The public has to be interested in a film and promotion does not help this one bit. Yes when a film is being promoted heavily it does make the team probably feel better as its getting a push and you are doing something. Also a heavy publicity campaign makes the film feel hotter in Mumbai and industry circles irrespective if the campaign is hardly reaching out to other parts of the country. 

The failure of films like Mission Raniganj and Ganapath was down to the units not interesting the audience be it trailer or songs and nothing could have changed this. Once a trailer and units hits the digital space this automatically creates awareness of a film with much of the audience and its about them being interested. There is a segment of the audience which is harder to reach and here you still have to do paper ads especially regional languages to remind this audience that the film is coming. This was always done by the local distributor but things have changed over time with films being centrally distributed from Mumbai which may have to change back to the old ways like many other things especially for the bigger films.

Promotion is a myth and if we look at the last year then a lot of these small films which have done well have done well without much promotion and even the bigger films from Pathaan, OMG 2 to Jawan and now Tiger 3 is coming without much promotion. The facts and proof is always there but the industry tends to overlook the facts and go on opinions. Its not just with promotion but even what is good and bad. Just a few years back a disaster like 83 was released and its poor fate was put down to the pandemic shutting some markets because the industry believed that a bad film was good. Here the facts were staring you in the face as Pushpa (Hindi) at the same time was running riot on far less screens and no South India as well as the shut markets in the pandemic. This sort of stuff is blindness and is very hard to cure..

There may have been a couple of good months with films like Gadar 2 and Jawan doing extraordinary business but the production sector is still struggling with very few films going on the floors and things can only get better when the industry starts to believe in the facts be it about promotion or what is good and bad cinema especially the latter.

At present it looks like streaming has come and died a natural death as flavour of the day but no mater what is said it has actaully hurt Hindi cinema in a big way in terms the content that much of the industry was comfortble making no longer has much of an audience and this shift to better content is going to be a long and hard process.  The Indian audience is actually not that demanding and require simple relatable human stories laced with music and the other commercial elements but the industry has forgotten this cinema barring a few.