Was Pathaan's marketing strategy just relying on SRK’s brand value?

The Bollywood actor's co-stars were not seen in any promotions, nor did the filmmakers have extravagant marketing budget.

Till now, ‘Pathaan’, starring Shah Rukh Khan (SRK), Deepika Padukone, John Abraham and Dimple Kapadia, is ruling the box office and breaking all records. The film has already surpassed the Rs 600-crore mark globally, and is en route to becoming one of the top blockbusters. 

All the records were shattered without any marketing strategy. Despite having a Rs 250-crore budget, none of SRK's co-stars were seen promoting ‘Pathaan’. At a time when marketing and PR teams go all out to promote a film, ‘Pathaan’ stars were not involved in television appearances, press conferences, interviews, Instagram Lives and promotional events. There wasn't any collaboration with social media influencers either.

No stars from the movie were seen on the Kapil Sharma show, nor were they spotted on a talk show with any film critics like Anupama Chopra or Rajeev Masand.

One of the reasons the film's stars didn’t attend press conferences is that sometimes, there are questions that could hamper the image and persona of the actors, thereby generating negative publicity. Aryan Khan, SRK’s son, was allegedly involved in a drug case a while back. If King Khan had attended press conferences, then questions about his son would have been raised.

Also, this time around, the hype was much higher, as King Khan was making his return after four years. His last movie 'Zero' was released in 2018. 

The director of ‘Pathaan’, Siddharth Anand, said in an interview earlier, “We want the euphoria around his return to reach a crescendo by January 25, the release date of ‘Pathaan’. Thus, we will start all our promotional activities only post the release of the film.” 

The Bollywood fraternity was backing ‘Pathaan’. The industry was placing bets on SRK to boost theatre attendance back to pre-COVID levels. 

The brand value of King Khan was over $46 million in 2021, according to research by Duff & Phelps Celebrity. The people behind ‘Pathaan’ simply capitalised on SRK’s celebrity and brand value, which appears to be working in their favour.

The only marketing that SRK did was using his Twitter account to conduct his famous 15-minute #AskSRK sessions for a month. In these sessions, many of his fans asked him about ‘Pathaan’ that created organic marketing for the film.

During Pathaan’s success party recently, SRK had this to say, “It wasn't on purpose that we didn't interact with the media. We shot the film during COVID. Everyone was busy later, due to which we were not able to meet mediapersons. Somewhere down the line, we're all in the same team, including cinema, media, radio and social media. I'm thankful to the audiences and media for supporting the film.”

The film is also banking on people's Fear of Missing Out (FOMO). The box office results of the first week, the reviews and the buzz created in the first week is leading many to theatre halls in the second week as well.