Kiccha Sudeep fans less than happy about Vikrant Rona’s tepid promotions

The Vikrant Rona promotions have been a bone of contention for Kiccha Sudeep fans, who are eagerly looking forward to its release and hoping for it to have a good box office outing world-wide. The marketing strategy, they reckon, has been flawed from the start. While the team had announced a promotional tour map, with set properties lined up for release at regular intervals, they did not follow it after all. The songs have been released randomly, while the trailer also jumped the queue and was out more than a month before the film’s release.

Closer to the release of the film, the team has stepped up promotions with Sudeep at the forefront, but fans say that the focus on media interviews and lack of offline events will hurt the film’s prospects. Although Sudeep is known across the country, when taking his films to markets that are not his core strength, more public interactions should have been the order of the day to drum up excitement around the film. So far, all that the actor has been doing is heading to a mall or two and doing the Gadangg Rakkamma hook step with other dancers.

Just when the actor began touring the country, he fell sick and was out of action for a few days, which hurt the promotional plans further. The team is currently in Mumbai, and will head to Hyderabad on Monday. They will be back in Bengaluru on Tuesday and then be in Dubai for the film’s red carpet premiere.

The promotional tour map was actually a good plan, had the team stuck to it – major announcements interspersed with surprise elements. Hey Fakira, the song about Nirup Bhandari’s character should have been the first one out of the Vikrant Rona stable, but then it was Gadang Rakkamma – The Queen of Good Times, Sudeep’s special number with Jacqueline Fernandez that was rolled out. While it went viral in no time, there’s not been as much buzz for subsequent announcements.

Also, Nirup was conspicuously missing from the first phase of promotions, as he had to instead focus on his other release, Window Seat, which, incidentally, was also produced by Manjunath Gowda of Shalini Artss. At the Bengaluru event for the trailer launch, Nirup’s pair Neetha Ashok made it to the stage as an after-thought, while everyone focused on Jacqueline’s presence. The Bollywood siren, appears in the song and has a minor scene with one line, which has, strangely, become the biggest talking point of Vikrant Rona.

On social media, the marketing team Little Big Films has been at the receiving end of a lot of hate from Sudeep fans, but an industry insider tells us that they are barking up the wrong tree. No decision about Vikrant Rona’s promotion can be made without Sudeep’s approval, says the insider. So, the onus of not enough being done, if at all, falls on him too, says this source.

Whatever be the case, there is a palpable discontent among fans about the lack of buzz for the film outside of Karnataka, made worse by the fact that there are big releases in most other markets that week.