Bollywood’s PR cycle can be the most brain-deadening exercise for those involved. Anyone who follows it closely during the big releases, will tell you how the directors and actors are made to answer ridiculous questions at a teaser launch. Followed by which, there is a trailer launch. Then there are the social media campaigns. And then the actors and directors are subjected to similar questions to the point, where they are giving the same answer in interview after interview.
That’s why Sui Dhaaga’s logo reveal comes as a welcome break from the everyday drudgery of Bollywood public relations.
Appropriately released on National Handloom Day, the team behind Sharat Katariya’s film dropped a video showcasing its logo made by artisans from different corners of India. A welcome break from trailers and songs, the film (as the name suggests) is built around India’s hinterland craftsmen, so it’s only fitting that the film get its logos designed by the very people they are enacting.
This is a great idea for promotional material, that is reminiscent of Bollywood’s last decent PR campaign spearheaded by a certain Mr Aamir Khan in 2009. As Shah Rukh Khan kept juggling more than his dozen TV channel appointments and participating in a plethora of reality shows for 2009’s Billu, Aamir Khan went… missing.
Yes, it was a PR exercise where Aamir Khan pretended to go missing around India, and surfaced with the most ridiculous makeovers. Some might consider it silly, but the truth was Aamir Khan managed to garner more curiosity by going missing (also a theme in the film) than Shah Rukh Khan managed with his many, many salaams to TV channels.
Just like 3 Idiots from almost a decade ago, Sui Dhaaga cuts through the clutter and stands out. The craftsmen from Kashmir in the north to the Toda tribe from Tamil Nadu in the south, and from Rajasthan in the west to Assam in the east – have participated in this exercise.
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And as the makers place all the film’s logos one after another, one can’t help but be reminded of Gaspar Noe’s opening credits of Enter The Void – where the filmmaker used every typeface in the book to list out the names of the cast and crew.
Any promotional material from the YRF stable is hard to take seriously, but this video is quite lovely to be honest. Mostly because it reverberates a theme of the film – local craftsmen. In an era of bored interviewers and interviewees, and routine social media exercises – Sui Dhaaga manages to go basic. If it becomes successful, it will be well-deserved.
Watch the whole video here:
