FilmIndia (1940)

Film Publicity Is Dot Blah, Blah! Study Df mass Psychology necessary People Laugh At "Gate Crashers" and "World Premieres" (By: "Zabak" Of The Sunday Standard) (For Once, Zabak, perhaps the most popular newspaper columnist we have in the country to-day, goes all out and hits the publicity men in our film industry — and hits them hard. There is plenty to think in what he writes and much to learn. THE EDITOR.) I am downright, absolutely positive t'hat there cannot be any worsp publicity copy in the world than the ones we come across in our dailies advertising Indian films. Some of the advertisements. . . .the copy, blocks and layout are so dreadfully amateurish that 'one does not know whether to treat them as jokes or to consider them as reflections of the type of brains behind their manufacture. Very badly worded, ungrammatically put with a lot of hulla-baloo and without one touch of human appeal or the faintest idea of mass psychology to give it that compel : Bibbo comes again in "Inti/ar" a Great India picture. ling power .... these advertisements seem to cry to the heavens themselves for redress. With competition and rivalry becoming so acute, publicity has today come to play a most vital part in the marketing of any commodity .... and it does not matter whether the product is tooth-paste, soap, automobile, a spitfire or a dreadnought.... if the copy is misleading, unattractive or badly written it does not only hamper the sales but. also mortally injures the manufacturer's goodwill and trade name Unfortunately this fact is lost upon the big shots who run our studios with the result that a most important branch of the industry is allowed to deteriorate more and more, day by day. ADVERTISING MEANS SELLING Some of the so-called publicity officers attached to our studios do not seem to understand the very fundamentals of advertising. They do not realise that merelv digging out all the beautiful adjectives from a massive dictionary and going all out to eulogise the picture is not enough, and they seem to completely forget the basic fact that they have been engaged to sell and not to praise, although there will be some who will say that you cannot sell without praise. Probably they are correct, but 1 insist, on repeating that mere praising is not selling. You may declare, "This is the finest picture in the world", or you may splash across the full length of a newspaper, "The Greatest Picture Ever Made", but that is not enough to pull the reader out of his home and drag him to thr theatre. Mr. Zah»f "R Kur«M<=hi otherwise known as "Zabak." The public of late have been put wise to the truth behind "Finest" and "Greatest" pictures. SOME HACKNEYED STUNTS The audacity of some fertile brained publicity men is so outrageous that it takes one's breath away at their very, should I say, cheek. Months before a picture has been completed advertisements make an appearance declaring the unfinished product: "Hailed as the Gate-Crasher of 1940." How can it be hailed without even being seen and how on earth can it be a gatecrasher without even the gates being opened? Yet another very familiar and much hackneyed stunt is to cram a number of blocks together and then let fly about half-a-dozen questions at the poor reader: "Do you know what is true love?*', "Do you know this, that or the other? Then see the answer in this picture .... blah, blah etc." This is all very perplexing to the reader and he definitely disapproves of being presented with a question paper first thing in the morning. Then again the publicity "wizards' think that acclaiming a current release to be a "World Premiere" some may think "Ah! This must be a great picture it's having a world premiere", but in actual fact they do not see the public 36