Film marketers are inventing new ways to discover fresh audiences in non-metropolitan towns. The soon to release film starring Vidya Balan, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor and Naseruddin Shah, The Dirty Picture has worked out a specific strategy to promote the film in smaller towns. Of late, smaller towns have become big for the films and film marketers are going with specialist outreach agencies that promote the film in territories beyond the metro cities.

So while travelling in the train don't get surprised to see magazine cover on all wheelers stalls across India, sporting the picture of leading actress Vidya Balan on the cover of popular Hindi magazine Manohar Kahaniyan. As the magazine is known for "raunchy" content, the cover only promises the truth behind the film.

Hindi filmmakers are fast realizing the importance of promoting their movies differently in non-metropolitan India as multiplexes are fast penetrating B towns. According to industry players, an upward push in the purchasing power of residents in smaller towns has also raised their importance as audiences for filmmakers. The makers of The Dirty Picture are promoting the movie with a regional strategy in non- metropolitan cities and have hired a separate marketing agency Spice Bhasha.

"Gone are the days of plain vanilla marketing where you marketed the movie in the top eight metro cities and your job was done. We need to reach out to the consumer beyond the metropolitan cities and make them aware about the movie, that's the reason we have hired Bhasha which specializes in promoting films in non-metropolitan India," said Tanuj Garg, Chief Executive Officer at Balaji Films. He adds that a movie like The Dirty Picture has a universal theme with a mass connect and required to be marketed differently in different regions of the country.

Cities like Patna, Lucknow, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Chandigarh, Nashik, Nagpur, Pune, Amristar and Barielly among others are now among the new key destinations for film promotions besides the eight metropolitan towns. By putting Vidya Balan on the cover of the magazine, the marketers of The Dirty Picture too are exploring the film's chances of finding and including a new audience.