Blogger Profile — Rohit Bhargava
Rohit Bhargava’s blog, on his website rohitbargava.com, talks about more than just film and television marketing. In fact, he blogs about a broad spectrum of topics, all under a marketing lens. When he does blog about film and media marketing, I find his perspective refreshing. In most cinema blogs, the cinematic value of films is discussed in addition to the way the film was marketed. This is not always a bad thing, but I feel it can take away from a more detailed analysis of marketing. This is why I like reading from Bhargava’s blog, specifically his writings on marketing within the film and television industry.
After a successful 15 years working as a brand and marketing specialist at agencies Ogilvy and Leo Burnett, two of the largest in the industry, Rohit Bhargava has good authority over the topic of marketing. Since working at Oglivy and Leo Burnett, Bhargava teaches a popular signature class on storytelling and marketing at Georgetown University in Washington DC and has published five books. He has consulted big name companies like NASA, Intel, American Express, Disney, Coca-Cola, LinkedIn, etc. on topics of marketing. The way I know him best, though, is through his blog. He has been writing a personal marketing blog for the last 14 years. His blog has been featured by AdAge magazine as one of the top 25 marking blogs in the world.
One of his stand out publications on his blog is called “The Most Authentic Movie Marketing Campaign Ever?” Here he talks the film Epic as having a less than traditional form of marketing. He starts off with, “It’s hard to imagine a movie trailer without ‘The Voice,’” This is very true. Movies trailers are known for featuring a deep, male voice which narrates elements of the story: “About a man… who struggles between…” You get the idea. Bhargava lists two priorities of movie trailers: one, “use a trailer to show the best scenes of the film,” and 2, “use random quotes for endorsements and social proof.” On the other hand, the marketing for Epic adds something to their visual marketing that takes away the boring and overdone use of “The Voice.” In addition to the trailer, TV Spots for the film Epic were released. Each of the TV Spots featured a character and the voice actor behind the character. Through these TV Spots we are shown actors like Pitbull, Josh Hutcherson, and Beyoncé, as they perform their character’s voices. This type of marketing promotes the use of star actors, as well as gives potential audiences a sense of their favorite actor’s enthusiasm for the film.
In another article, Bhargava writes about Netflix and their comment on how they “find demographics to be useless as a predictor of what people watch.” I found this surprising. As I have written about Netflix previously, they pride themselves in their ability to recommend new content to their subscribers through their algorithm. This algorithm acts as a never-ending marketing tool for the content that is on Netflix. Bhargava states that they have, “this type of data to develop hit shows.” And yet this algorithm is under tight lock-and-key, much to Bhargava’s dismay.
