The Showman

“It takes to be a showman to host a successful show.”

Seems like a sensible but absurd statement. But that’s the fact of life. There are plentiful of people who attempt to host shows. A show could be anything from hosting a roadside “nautanki” to hosting international tournaments. The amount of money involved could be anything from a cipher to billions of dollars. The audience could be just a few bystanders to the entire six billion people in the world. And none of these factors actually guarantee or rather even decide the probability of success. But at the same time, you can’t give credit/blame the luck factor completely.

Take an example… in the November of 2007, a movie starring Shahrukh Khan was released. Yes, you guessed it right, it was Om Shanti Om. Now you can call it luck or co-incidence or whatever. Om Shanti Om was released on the same day as Saawariya which was the worst movie I have seen the last decade. At the same time, a wonderful movie – Jab We Met – was released a month before Om Shanti Om. If Om Shanti Om had a stiff competition by Jab We Met, it had an encouraging audience because of Saawariya. Personally I would rate Om Shanti Om as an average movie. People who love SRK would love it, people who hate him would hate it and people like me who don’t mind the King Khan would not mind the movie either.

Given this scenario, Om Shanti Om was a big hit. Even bigger than Jab We Met; in spite of the fact that Jab We Met outclassed Om Shanti Om in every aspect. But it was SRK’s diligent marketing that actually resulted in Om Shanti Om being a bigger success. Its not that Om Shanti Om was bad, but it did not certainly deserve to be a blockbuster. But Shahrukh made it happen. How? Pure Marketing.

Same is the case with the Indian Premiere League. The original concept of Twenty-20 is of the British. The first company to implement the concept at the commercial was Zee with ICL. But it is quite evident that today IPL is very very successful as compared to ICL or England’s internal Twenty-20 cricket. Again it was excellent marketing strategy of the BCCI that has resulted in the success of IPL.

What I am trying to explain is that India has produced two text book cases for management students where a product has been sold which the costumer did not want to buy. No one wanted to see Om Shanti Om and still it was a success. No one initially liked the concept of IPL, yet it is a success. And that’s why I would like to repeat the golden statement that I mentioned in the beginning of this post:

“It takes to be a showman to host a successful show.”