BTS of the Pathaan on Prime Video ad campaign

One Hand Clap’s Aakash Shah and Naveed Manakkodan, spill the beans on working with SRK and the campaign strategy for Pathaan’s OTT release.

The year's big blockbuster movie — Pathaan — is now streaming on Amazon Prime Video and the platform has pulled out all the stops to promote the movie's OTT showing.

To promote the film’s digital release, Prime Video released multiple promotional videos on social media, starring the main leads in the movie — Shah Rukh Khan and Deepika Padukone. The campaign was conceived by Prime Video India’s retainer social media marketing agency, One Hand Clap. 

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In a conversation with afaqs!, Aakash Shah, founder, One Hand Clap, shares that the agency has been working with Prime Video India for four years now.

“For Pathaan’s release on Prime Video, the idea for the creatives, was simple. It was that Prime Video will pitch bad marketing ideas to SRK and he will shoot them down.”

Explaining the process behind developing the creative, Shah elaborates that the final idea for the film was chosen after multiple ideas were pitched to the brand and the PR teams of the stars.

“The brand basically looks at merit and how much emphasis is on the title ‘Pathaan on Prime’ in each ad. After multiple rounds of feedback from Prime Video, we came down to 2-3 good ideas, which then were pitched to the film’s production house, Yash Raj Films (YRF). The final layer of developing the concept behind the creatives, was getting the scripts approved by SRK and Padukone’s teams.”

He also says that while the script was already written, there were still inclusions and alterations being made to it till Khan arrived on the set of the shoot.

The reason the Bhuvan Bam-SRK ad stands out is that the ad simply repeats a single point in multiple entertaining ways. The simplicity of the idea is what makes the ad a winner.

Shah says that Pathaan on Prime Video is mentioned at least ten times in the ad film. "This is a huge win for any brand - you’re repeating the key message and it’s your sketch’s main gag as well,” Shah elaborates.

This isn’t the first time that the team has worked with SRK. Naveed Manakkodan, head of production, One Hand Clap, feels that celebrities of SRK’s stature, are more than willing to try out different things creatively, when it comes to social media. 

Actors tend to be open to self-depricating humour on social media and this has been particularly observed with Khan who has in the past featured in ads for Disney+ Hotstar where he is part of the gag.

“When big actors appear on social media, they like to get out of their comfort zone. They’re open to exploring new things that you won’t expect them to do traditionally.”

The agency wanted to create a memorable moment within the ad. Hence, according to Shah, prominent social media influencer Bhuvan Bam seemed like an obvious choice to feature opposite SRK in the film.

The second film, starring Padukone, also featured a social media influencer. Shah informs that Prime Video was keen on having Danish Sait in the ad, as he and Padukone have worked with each other in the past, just like SRK and Bam.

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“The idea behind the ads, is quite basic. These kinds of ideas, where you’re basically pitching bad marketing ideas to someone, have been done before. The reason why it became memorable is because SRK and Bam, and Padukone and Sait, are doing it together,” Shah asserts.

Manakkodan says that while influencers and celebrities have collaborated for social media content before, combining the idea of such a collaboration with a campaign, is something that the agency wanted to experiment with.

"The idea was to avoid stereotypical promotional videos where the actors come in and inform the viewers that Pathaan is on Prime Video. The ad film combines the jokes with this information in it," he says.

Manakkodan further believes that the insertion of this attribution in the ad film is very subtle. "It's very subtle. Bhuvan keeps pitching and Shah Rukh keeps retaliating.But in every pitch of his there is a Pathaan and Prime Video involved. He's saying that subconsciously and then that leads to further jokes," he adds.