Tintin scores well in India

Directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Sony Pixar studios, 'The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, opened in India in November last year and managed to receive a good response. However, the potential of licensing and merchandising opportunities around the same could have been leveraged in a far better manner.

For those (now mostly in their forties) who have grown up on a diet of Tintin comics, the new celluloid avatar of Tintin was a golden chance to re-connect with the gallant reporter and his extended family including Haddock, Professor Calculus, the  clumsy detectives Thomson and Thompson and Tintin’s enemy, Rastapopoulos. Running high on sentiments and aiming at creating a new target audience, the movie based merchandise buzz surely did show some positive signs in the country.

Some licensing activities doing the rounds

While Bangalore-based Chocolate Junction has brought out Tintin theme based chocolates, Funskool India has introduced puzzles based on the characters. Garnering a lot of publicity and good market response is Fast Trax, which has developed a successful promotional campaign revolving around the movie.

Samar Qureshi, Director, Fast Trax Food Pvt Ltd, says, “The entire spectrum of differing age groups was enthralled by the promotional licensing activities carried out by us. We had something to offer to everyone.” Fast Trax is a well known fast food chain, which has managed to grow from 2 to 22 outlets in a few years’ time.

Funskool India Ltd has procured the license for Tintin puzzles from Bradford License India, the Indian representative of Paramount Licensing Inc. The deal implies Funskool manufacturing and distributing Tintin puzzles in India and the range has been launched from December, 2011. On the same lines, Seventymm Services Pvt Ltd inked a licensing deal with Paramount Licensing Inc for licensed merchandise, including t-shirts for men, women and kids, caps, bags, mugs, diaries, calendars, posters and non-figural USB drives. Seventymm.com offers an exclusive range of movie merchandise, apparel, electronic gadgets and fashion accessories, among other things.

Mudit Khosla, CEO, Seventymm, opines, “The deal has been an eye opener. We are excited to have entered into this deal and are looking forward to signing a few more. The sales volume that we projected to the licensor in a year, we will be able to beat that in three quarters.” Khosla shares that the most profitable category is t-shirts, and adds that character licensing is surely picking up in India. He says, “We plan to stay invested in this concept for mid to long term games.”

Not all is positive

Sometimes high pricing and lack of vendor management can take a toll on a licensing programme.  Chocolate Junction, yet another licensee for Paramount Pictures for chocolates, is not happy with the sales performance so far. The company launched a box of 25 chocolates, which comes with a small Tintin book as a memorabilia and is priced at  `300. Referring to his expectations from the deal, M L Amarnath, Owner, Chocolate Junction, says that he was seeking better cooperation from all the vendors, especially the theatres and the books shops. There was disappointment in his tone with regards to the fact that it was a lovely concept and if it was well nurtured, it would have taken off well in the country. He emphasises that there were two considerations that were crucial and proved to be a setback – an extremely high licensing fee and the harsh reality that India is a price sensitive market. “We have introduced special packaging and flavours for the special Tintin chocolate box that we have launched,” says Amarnath. He further adds, “We have made an investment of  `8 lakh with regards to the packaging and the license fee and we have not even attained a rough sales figure of 50,000 yet.”

“We did not get a very cooperative and positive feedback from retail players like Landmark, INOX, Crossword and PVR among others, who did not seem very interested,” Amarnath says. “The enterprises are not ready to take up the challenge to promote the same, given the fact that they were being offered a good 25 per cent margin for the same.  However, we are satisfied that we attempted doing something new,” he sums up.

Both the Chocolate Junction and the Seventymm agreements are valid until March 31, 2013.

Awaiting the best

“In India, especially with Bollywood movies, revenue generation and promotion through merchandise is still in its nascent stage and will take time to reach some proportions in comparison to the West. However, the Hollywood film merchandise does sell well in India. The proof of the pudding always lies in the fact that the merchandised product is true to the film,” says Pritie S Jadhav, COO, P9 Integrated, a division of Percept Ltd.

It can be understood that a crucial factor that needs to be kept in mind while launching movie-based merchandise is that it needs to grow on people and the gestation period involved should be good enough to build the movie’s hype, in order to cash in on the sentiments of the avid fans in the best way possible. Also, there’s a requirement for understanding the target group and their connectivity with the movie character. It can be said undoubtedly that the opportunities that licensing and merchandising provide with regards to movie based deals are unlimited.