MSM reaches for the stars

After three flops in a row, the production house hit bulls-eye with Piku. How did it break the jinx?

It was fourth time lucky for MSM Motion Pictures, a part of the Multi Screen Media (MSM) group, as Shoojit Sircar's Piku won over hearts as well as the box office last month. Three films before this had made no impact at the box office, few would even remember their names. But Piku, now that is a different story altogether. With flexible payment structures and innovative marketing strategies, the film has helped the company carve out a neat niche in the big and burly world of Bollywood.

Piku has made Rs 78 crore in the domestic market and is way ahead of expectations in overseas collections. The other three together (Bajaatey Raho, Daar at the Mall and Youngistan) made less than Rs 10 crore when they were released. So what did MSM do differently?

IT’S SHOWTIME FOLKS!

2013

• MSM Motion Pictures is launched
• Daar at the Mall and Bajaatey Raho released

2014

• Youngistaan released

2015

• A dedicated team set up
• A big star cast is assembled
• Piku released
• Rs 78 crore: Box office collections for Piku
• Less than Rs 10 crore: The combined box collections of previous three films

The first step was building a dedicated team for the film. NP Singh, CEO, MSM is candid. He says, "For us, Piku is the start of the innings. We would consider the projects before that net practice." The second step was to be more flexible about its revenue models as that was the only way it could afford the best talent. And finally, it planned and executed a marketing strategy that went beyond promotions and Friday release-related events.

The MSM network includes the Sony bouquet of channels. It started broadcast operations in 1995 and also has a division looking after movie releases called Sony Releases. In 2013, with MSM Motion Pictures the group formally entered Bollywood as a production house. The MSM Motion Pictures team has spent considerable time in the industry and some, even within the group and it therefore has the advantage of being a young company managed by old hands. Singh says, "We have a considerable presence on the small screen and the motion pictures business was the logical extension. But we were new and were, still are, learning the ropes. Piku was the first project after we built a proper team and the effort has shown results!"

Singh's team is headed by Sneha Rajani, who has worked with Sony Max and SET. Marketing head Vivek Krishnani used to work with Fox Star Studios earlier. Both, acutely aware of the vagaries of the movie business, understand that failures are scripted into the movie business. But, the slide downhill begins only when a production company hits the panic button.

Rajani is clear that slow and steady wins the race. She says, "We are in no hurry to scale up the number of releases a year. We announced Piku last year (2014) around April and released it a year later. We have announced Azhar with Balaji (Studios) last month, which will be ready for release in a year. Before announcing a film, there is at least six months of work that goes into evaluating the script, costing and talent." But as Rajani and Singh would agree, sometimes, getting a good script with great talent at the right budget can be an uphill task. So if new outfits such as theirs are to survive, they need to experiment with business models.

MSM therefore has kept itself open to revenue sharing arrangements with artists. While the company refused to comment on this, sources in the industry revealed that it shares box office profits with the lead cast, instead of giving them an outright fee. "In what could be an industry first, Deepika (Padukone) has taken a profit share. This has helped reduce the cost of the film at the onset, which means the film broke even faster at the box office level," reveals a source close to the actress and studio. Also the company does not apply a one-size-fits-all model to all productions; it approaches each film as a new project.

Like many others the studio is also looking at the co-production route for some films. Its next project--a biopic on Mohammed Azharuddin, is being produced with Balaji Motion Pictures. In the past, MSM has tied up with YRF for distribution of its films.

MSM has also struck an innovative note on the marketing front. With Piku, it adopted a two-pronged approach. One was to use its inherent strength in terms of the Sony channels' reach for promoting the film. This helped keep publicity costs within reasonable limits. And the second was to build a range of brand associations for the film and its characters.

The film was promoted on various Sony channels. The lead actors co-promoted the Indian Premier League (which is telecast on Sony Max and four other MSM channels and also featured in an exclusive campaign for Sony Pix. Suniel Wadhwa, independent distributor says, "Sony's (MSM)'s innovative marketing strategy for Piku really paid off."

At the same time the studio wove in a select set of brands into the script. The trick Vivek Krishnani believes is to make brand placements as subtle as possible. "We will be integrating the products into the script. For this we need to start early." They will start pitching for Azhar very soon he says. Now, all they need to do is get the box office to play ball.