Innovative Marketing of Gangs of Wasseypur

Whether it is a car, software or toothpaste marketing these days determines either is it a hit or flop product. The case of movies is no different. In recent years movies have made money and declared as blockbusters not only for the good content and star cast but also for the innovative marketing activities which has get the attention of the masses and media alike, making the name and characters of the movie, “talk of the town”.

The Gang of Wasseypur is one such movie which has a great content and had been promoted through innovative marketing in terms of the social media, on ground and print media. Through these marketing techniques the gangs of Wasseypur team was successful in engaging the audience. This movie is basically divided into two parts Gangs of Wasseypur 1&2 and has got good ratings from all channels. The total money flooded of both parts is around 19 crores and marketing budget for the two parts was around 12 crores.

Now the question arises:

How did innovative marketing make this movie a hit at the box office?

 Innovative marketing strategy

A great product

The movie Gangs of Wasseypur is a crime thriller based on a coal mafia in Dhanbad. It’s a cocktail of facts and fiction. The movie covered 80 percent of the real mafia life in Dhanbad and it r added with cine fictions to give more lively and entertainment essence to the audience. As we know that thriller mafia kind of movies like “Once Upon A Time In Mumbai”, “Satya”, and “Vaastav” were one of the biggest hits of its times. It shows that the Indian cine fans likes thriller and violence packed movies. In this series, the Gangs of Wasseypur was also successful due to its songs, dialogues, locations, and content, which mostly resembles the background of Dhanbad in the screen and more over the actors in the movie represented the real behavior of Wasseypuries. The interpretation of the director of the socio-economic situation post-independence till date of the coal belt area gave to the audience a taste of Wasseypuri’s dialect, culture and inter-personal tussles among sects of the same religion, and the indomitable will of individuals to rise and remain in power.

On ground marketing

After screening of the film at Cannes film festival the Gangs of Wasseypur team danced on the street in the city wearing red Gamchhas which had taken centre stage and has given the rustic touch of the movie. Even the music launch of the movie was unique in its way where the cast and crew of Gangs of Wasseypur were in jeep including Anurag Kasyap the director of the movie and one of them dancing in front of the jeep giving real feel how the life is in Wasseypur. As we know now a day many Bollywood gimmicks are being taken to the news channels (entertainment section) and other entertainment channel like Zoom TV and MTV, hence the marketing team of the movie has utilized this medium well. They have come up with the unique memento which has bullets of different era. The music in the film has also been maintained the Bihari style which made the movie more alive and increased the anxiety among audience.  The 12-year old singer who used to sing in local trains for making her daily livings has sung the song “DIL CHICHA LEATHER”. Its Catchy lyrics and unconventional singing of the girl has successfully managed to grab the attention of the audience.

Print media

The marketing team of gangs of Wasseypur has hired professional graffiti artists from well-known colleges like J.J College of arts to do designs on outdoor walls in all major cities. These beautiful graffiti designs attracted the major population in these cities. This was done to add value to movie in box office window. Keeping the language and setup of the film the Gangs of Wasseypur key dialogues such as “goli nahi marenge”, “keh ke lenge”, has been painted on walls across 20 cities. This was one of the cost effective means adopted to reach the audience. Apart from these they have also circulated over 2 lakhs newspaper inserts and around 1000 hoardings have been put up in Mumbai and Delhi in a time frame of one week.

Social media

In spite, Gangs of Wasseypur2 has been released one day before the multistarrer film Bol Bacchan it succeeded to become a trending topic on twitter all over India. The reason was that the Gangs of Wasseypur team has used social media (Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube) in a very innovative way. To begin with the gangs of Wasseypur team has recreated the characters in movie on Twitter to wage their election battle and gather support online. Furthermore the users were created for all the characters in the movie and the language used for conversation with fans was Hindi to maintain the flavor of the movie. Within no time the characters has got a huge fan following on Twitter as well as in Facebook. For Ramdhir Singh there were 150 followers on twitter within 4 hours and currently it has around 700 followers. Apart from this they have also provided the t-shirt with the dialogues printed on it through bewakoof.com. They have used all these means of communication to maintain the eagerness in audience and to give them fragrance of movie.

The marketing team of Gangs of Wasseypur was successful in making the film a hit at the box office through there innovative marketing techniques. The idea creation was well balanced with the content and was fruitful in exposing the content of the movie through all channels. Its achievement is shown after the release as it earned its money back in the first week of the release. The movie was finally boomed among the audience with huge ratings and has created a world of Wasseypur.


Venkat Tushar
Member- ZAMAC
MBA 2011-13 (JGBS)