Gully Boy Exclusives - A marketing solution to the short shelf life of movies?

Excel Entertainment, makers of Gully Boy launched a content property, Gully Boy Exclusives on YouTube, attempting to recreate the charm of the film from their in-house video library.

The crucial difference between marketing a product and marketing a movie is the longevity of the shelf life. The success of all your marketing efforts rely on the movie’s performance that in case of a blockbuster is restricted to 3 – 4 weeks (that too if we’re being optimistic). In most cases it’s a two a week window, post which your product (movie in this case) tends to become secondary in nature, subjected to appointment viewing when it premiers on television or OTT.

The end result usually is the movie being treated as catch up content, if and when, viewers stumble upon it on a certain platform or have an unusual craving because it’s their favourite. Gully Boy Exclusives just might be the answer to this challenge.

Attempting to peak demand for their movie, nearly a year after the release are the makers of Gully Boy, who with content are recreating the Murad magic which could translate into viewership for the film across platforms its available on.

Now, in the case of Gully Boy, given the nature of the movie, the makers have resorted to multiple brand associations, in an attempt to recover the cost. In terms of pre-release marketing too, no stone was left unturned reflecting in their content associations with Girlyapa, Snapchat AR Filter or the content property, Voice of Streets. Though the makers told media outlets that their budgets were similar to that of any small movie – the diversity of tactics definitely boasted of more.

Also Read: Chhapaak Movie Marketing as powerful as the movie theme?

Releasing a new content property on their YouTube channel, Excel Entertainment launched Gully Boy Exclusives. With 2 – 3 minute long episodes show various deleted scenes from the film. Each of the episodes has views ranging from a few lakhs to a million.  

In terms of engagement, the videos have received comments from raving the masterpiece that the film was to stating that all deleted scenes be released and should have been the part of the original cut.

Timing it with the movie’s one year release anniversary, the videos essentially entail no production cost, make for a perfect example of snackable content, and manage to grab a few extra views for the movie, available on Prime Videos India, by generating the yearn to see it all over again.

With movie release anniversaries becoming a trend (example: #20YearsOfKahoNaPyaarHai, #10Years OfMyNameIsKhan, etc) Gully Boy Exclusives serve as a good reminder.

Could this be a new post-release movie marketing
strategy? It certainly should, for production houses sit on a goldmine of
content.