I watched the first part of Baahubali in Vinayaka theatre on its first day, first show along with two of my colleagues. After witnessing the interval scene where Baahubali single handedly saves the people from getting crushed under the monumental statue of Bhallaladeva, all of us thought Rajamouli has completely lost it. We compared that scene with Balayya’s stunts like the one where he reverses the train by slapping his thigh. After the movie was over, all of thought that the movie was well made but might fail at the box office. Defying our predictions, the movie went on to become the biggest grosser in the history of Indian cinema at that point. That, obviously raised an interesting question. Why did the movie succeed?
Before I attempt to give my opinion about the question, I would like to tell about an interesting article I read recently. The article discusses persuasive ad techniques. It says that there are three ways to sell a product, Pathos, Ethos and Logos. The Pathos technique involves appealing to the emotions and feelings of the customer. For example, Patanjali markets its products as swadeshi products and tried to appeal to the patriotic sentiments of the people. Ethos involves using credibility to sell products. Toothpaste ads are the best examples for this technique. ’99% of dentists in India believe that Colgate helps you avoid dental problems’. Since dentists are the authority on the subject, we believe, Colgate is the best toothpaste. Third technique is Logos. This is the age old technique where we try to persuade people using logic. For example, ‘vaccination prevents Covid as per carefully conducted medical trials, so please get vaccinated’
Now, let’s understand how Baahubali was sold to us. We all remember that it was marketed as the pride of Indian Cinema, the magnum opus etc. Here, they’re using Pathos technique to convince us. They’re appealing to our patriotic sentiments to sell the product. Similarly, numerous reviews talked about how South Indian films are a class apart from the Bollywood. Such reviews appeal to the emotions of people belonging to the South which is the main market of the movie. Then, there’re promotion events. The entire film industry came together to sing paeans about the movie. People like Karan Johar called it the master piece. However, there were some reviews where they criticised the movie for not giving enough space for the female protagonists. Of course, the movie had a great story, brilliant action sequences and breath taking visuals. That is the Logos.
The movie ended in a cliffhanger, ‘Why did Kattappa kill Baahubali’. This unleashed a publicity blitzkrieg for the second movie. The entire country discussed why Kattappa killed Baahubali. That was a marketing master stroke. However, all the earlier techniques were used too. It was again marketed as the pride of Indian Cinema, it was again praised by everyone. Added to that, they made sure that the earlier criticism was addressed. The reviews were all praise about how the women of the movie were so powerful and how the movie stood for feminism. Thus, they managed to woo another section of audience which criticised its first part
This is not to say that it’s a bad movie. It definitely is an extremely well made movie. It created a huge market for South movies across India. It had become the torch bearer for fantasy movies and paved the way to make movies like Spiderman etc within India. This is just to say that he movie had achieved such stupendous success because of a brilliant marketing campaign which ran in the background. This is to doff the hat for those who silently worked in the background to create the history
