MUMBAI: The title track of ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ has broken records since its release. It is at over 20 million views on YouTube and some million streams on Saavn.

As the song has been climbing the charts steadily, we wanted to have an idea about the marketing plan on the music front. Radioandmusic got a chance to have a discussion with the spokesperson from Sony Music, who shared his views on promotion plans and more.

On the phenomenal success of the song, Sony Music senior marketing director Sanujeet Bhujabal said, “The whole idea of pitching the project differently was conceived way before its music release. When we were working on the promotion of the song, the pitching was different this time. With the aim of mass recognition, before releasing the official video, the song was released as an audio format on streaming platforms and that created quite an impact on the audiences. The excitement of releasing just the song on audio platforms before the song video was radical and created that initial storm on the streaming platforms."

Sharing the marketing strategy, he added, “We do not follow templates but create marketing plans customised to each song. Every song is treated differently and we create marketing objectives which are unique to that song. After the teaser of the song went viral, we got excited and we couldn’t afford to go wrong after that. We create the amplification as we have an in-house team as a promotional team, digital marketing team. Sony Music is the only record label in India that doesn’t outsource to any other third party for Sony’s promotional activities. The whole exercise was well planned and thought out by the team. If you look at the three big songs of this year, ‘Gerua’, ‘Kar Gayi Chull’ and now ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ you will see that all three songs were the first songs that started each of the campaigns and each one of them hit the bull’s eye. For us, at Sony Music, it is not just about creating a hit but using the learning process to make the next hit bigger. That is a very big point and keeps everyone excited for the next campaign."

He also added that the label works on a number of songs at the same time and constantly checks TV channels, streaming services, its own database and obviously consumers’ reactions.

“It’s not about creating a hit; it’s about the appeal, optimising, gut feeling and most importantly, the visualising. When I heard ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ for the first time, I knew we had a jackpot. As we created curiosity by releasing the teaser, trailer, the audio and the official video in that order, our anticipation clicked with the masses and the song reached its peak (15 million in two weeks) within just two weeks,” added he.

On the other hand, the release of the movie is uncertain at this time as MNS on Friday (23 September 2016) threatened Pakistani actors to leave India (Fawad Khan plays an important role), also made it clear that they will stall the release of ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ in Maharashtra.

Written and Directed by Karan Johar, starring Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma and Fawad Khan, ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’ is scheduled for its release on 28 October 2016.

Watch the official video of the song: