Bizarre gimmicks used by Bollywood celebs to promote their films

The desire to create buzz around their movies makes celebs and filmmakers opt for more creative ways to promote their films. The focus is to raise hype and grab eyeballs to facilitate maximum ticket sales in the opening weekend. From giving haircuts to people, faking an engagement, using a prosthetic baby bump, our tinsel town stars leave no stone unturned in promoting their films. Here's a list of actors who adopted bizarre techniques to promote their films:

Sidharth Malhotra all of a sudden went off Twitter recently stating, "I'm done". His fans went berserk and started asking him to be back on the social networking site. Even media was abuzz with reports of him quitting the social networking site. However, he was back on Twitter a few days later. In response to Manoj Bajpayee's tweet asking him to report to duty, the actor duo released the poster for their upcoming film 'Aiyaary'. The makers decided to release the poster of the film on the occasion of Vijay Diwas.

In 2015, Ranbir Kapoor, Deepika Padukone, and director Imtiaz Ali took a train ride from Mumbai to Delhi to promote their film 'Tamasha'. Their journey was full of fandom, media and rehashing their memories of travelling in trains. This is not the first time a star took a train to promote his movie. Earlier, Akshay Kumar set out on a train journey to promote 'Tees Maar Khan'.

While promoting her film 'Bobby Jasoos', Vidya Balan dressed as a beggar and sat amongst the beggars outside Hyderabad Railway Station. Reportedly, a woman, who mistook her for a beggar, scolded her for not working and taking the easy way out. She also wore a prosthetic baby bump while promoting her movie 'Kahaani', where she played a pregnant lady.

This was one odd promotional stint. Before the release of her film 'Ragini MMS 2', many auto-rickshaws across the country read - "Ragini Ka MMS Dekha Kya?" (Did you watch Ragini's MMS?), to create hype around the movie. The movie was a huge success and we're sure the Google searches for 'Ragini MMS' must have shot up!
To promote the movie, the makers had put her undergarments up for auction. Yeah, that's right, her undergarments!

This was one of the most dramatic promotions done on the social media. Alia Bhatt had sent out a public invitation of the promo launch of '2 States' in the guise of an engagement card on her own Twitter account. The post took social media by storm and later the readers realised it was a gimmick.

While promoting '3 Idiots', the actor went missing for two weeks. He adopted many disguises and he went on a tour of the country, challenging his fans to find him. Reportedly, he was making disguised appearances in small cities. Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, and Kareena Kapoor Khan allegedly supported the actor in this unique promotional strategy and dropped hints about his whereabouts. Meanwhile, for 'Ghajini' he got people to shave their heads in the style that he had done for the film.