Movie-marketing pioneer Yash Raj Films has innovatively marketed its offerings like Hum Tum (top) and Salaam Namaste

The thing about interviewing Ram Gopal Varma is, between questions, or during take-a-breath and collect-one's-thoughts breaks, the man poses queries of his own. All of them have to do with how the interviewer reacts to movies. Only later, if at all, will the interviewer realise that the man's behaviour is no different from that of a marketing manager at a fast moving consumer goods company or consumer electronics one who has to sell toothpaste or a DVD player and would like to get to know a person's dental hygiene routine or DVD player usage.

Varma's behaviour may be extreme, but it is indicative of a mindset change in Bollywood. Movies no longer get made for their own sake or to fulfil the creative aspirations of their makers (at least, not entirely). They get made, in part because their makers believe there is a market out there for them.

If the successful releases to date in 2005 have spanned everything from a dramatic story about a blind-deaf-mute who battles the odds to go to college, to a road-caper involving two small-town con artists to an American Pie style screwball comedy, it is because each has a market. It all comes down to how smart you are with your product and how you sell it, say Bollywood execs. Varma believes it is as easy as selling a pen. "The question is how you choose to do it," he says. "In the case of Black, we knew who our target audience was and positioned the film accordingly," adds Anshumaan Swami, CEO, Applause Entertainment, the Aditya Birla Group company that made the film (it was directed by Sanjay Leela Bhansali).

In this whole trend of marketers, sorry, film makers realising that there is a market for genre movies and those that appeal to niche audience segments, it is difficult to say whether producers followed the multiplex phenomenon, or multiplexes followed a change in Bollywood's direction. Genres like horror, says Arun Mehra, Chief Marketing Officer, Shringar Cinemas, were just made for multiplexes.

Bollywood's discovery of marketing is more about this change in mindset than it is about all things marketing, advertising, promotions, tie-ins with consumer product companies and the like. All these have become part of established practice in Bollywood. "There are monies committed to marketing," affirms Pritish Nandy, Founder Chairman of Pritish Nandy Communications.

The pioneer in marketing movies differently has to be Yash Raj Films. Last year it entered into a tie up with The Times of India to promote Hum Tum (the lead character was a cartoonist, and for 63 issues, as part of a nine-week campaign, TOI carried a cartoon strip titled Hum Tum). This year, it entered into one with NDTV to promote Bunty aur Babli through a programme featuring the film's lead pair reading the 8 p.m. news bulletin, titled Aaj Raat. "The TV podium has helped a lot, with producers sending their stars to appear in the popular serials to promote their films," says Vishal Patel, Head of Marketing and Distribution, Dharma Productions.

Then, the way Varma sees it, the change is only to be expected. If film makers start seeing their offerings as products, it is but natural that they try to market them scientifically.