A low budget 90 minutes movie, named Quick Gun Murugun (QGM), directed by Shashanka Ghosh and distributed by Fox Star Studios has used some interesting marketing tricks to pull the audience.

For the uninitiated, QGM is actually an extension of a television promo series which ran as fillers on Channel V in the mid-nineties. The promos featured QGM, a Tamil cowboy character developed by Ghosh and Rajesh Devraj, the writer of QGM. Ghosh was the creative director of Channel V at that time.

In the movie, Quick Gun Murugun is portrayed as a character who thinks that it is his duty to protect people and cows. The movie is centred on a battle between vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism, wherein Murugun fights with the villain, called Rice Plate Reddy, who is a restaurant owner and plans to create a machine-made non-vegetarian 'dosa'.

To market the movie, Fox Star Studios first had to familiarise the character to the uninitiated and also arouse curiosity about it. Vivek Krishnani, head, distribution, marketing and syndication, Fox Star Studios tells afaqs! that the company opted for a two phase marketing strategy, constituted by the pre and post release phases of the movie. The movie was released on August 28.

The pre-release marketing phase was initiated six weeks prior to the release. It was aimed at familiarising and establishing the character of QGM, especially among consumers in the age group of 15-28 years.

"Many youngsters were not aware about the character of QGM, which has arrived in the media space after a long time. They didn't know how QGM talks and behaves. So, the target was to ignite curiosity, familiarise, create interest and bring alive the character in the minds of the consumers," says Brijesh Jacob, managing partner, 22 Feet, the digital agency which was assigned the creative duties for the pre-launch marketing activities.

The film distribution company opted to portray the character as a real life person, with a cool and wacky attitude. Towards this end, it created presences on Facebook (Facebook.com/quickgunmurugun); Twitter (Twitter.com/quickgunmurugan) and a blog available at Quickgunmurugun09.blogspot.com.

The social media tools have been used to converse with the target audience and share QGM video clips and photos. The Facebook and Twitter profiles are still live and QGM has networked with more than 1,100 individuals on Facebook, while it is followed by about 900 Twitter members so far.

Interestingly, the process of familiarisation of QGM was not just restricted to the social media presence. In fact, Fox Star Studios went ahead to let the consumers experience the cool and wacky attitude of QGM in real life, too.

For instance, it tied up with ice cream brand Baskin-Robbins to launch a Quick Gun Murugun flavour of ice-cream. The flavour is still available across 365 Baskin-Robbin outlets in India. In another initiative, the world's largest dosa, 32.5 feet in length, was cooked by Rajendra Prasad (who plays the role of QGM in the movie), along with 16 cooks at Sankalp restaurant in Ahmedabad; the dosa created a new world record, with a mention in the Guinness Book of World Records.

Also, a comic strip, Quick Gun Murugun, was developed and published in the August issue of Yuva magazine and printed copies were distributed to students across many colleges in India. Currently, the comic strip can be checked on the Facebook profile and blog of QGM.

"In the post-release phase, starting August 28, all marketing activities are being centred on keeping the Quick Gun Murugun character alive," says Krishnani.

In line with this, Fox Star Studios has started offering some wacky items such as cowboy hats, match stick erasers, QGM playing cards and holsters to consumers who book their movie tickets through KyaZoonga.com. QGM T-shirts are also available through a portal called Inkfruit.com and a mobile game, Quick Gun Murugun, is being released in association with Indiagames.com.

Following the release, the film distribution company has roped in digital marketing agency, Ignitee Digital Solutions, to keep the QGM character alive in the social media space. The agency will manage social media properties such as Facebook, Twitter and a YouTube channel created before the release of the movie.

V Ramani, vice-chairperson, Ignitee, says, "Social media will be used to facilitate people to talk with each other about Quick Gun Murugun." The YouTube channel has already witnessed more than one lakh views till date.

Has marketing worked? A movie trade analyst points out that the film has already recovered more than 50 per cent of its production cost. According to estimations, the film has been produced at a low budget of about Rs 4-6 crore.