Audience and Institution Essay
1. Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied.
In the film industry, the
production, distribution, and exhibition of a film are all the main components
of the film-making process. However, during the distribution component, there
is one important factor to keep a keen eye on, and that is marketing. Marketing
is one of the most crucial deciding factors to determine a film’s success or
not. I feel that marketing is extremely important in the film media area, and
if done wrongly, it may very well just make the rest of the main components a
waste of effort and time.
First off, marketing plays an
important role in helping the film and film industry interact with the
audience. For example, for the movie Black Panther, the first appearance of the
trailer was during an NBA Finals game. This tactic helped raise lots of awareness
because there were many viewers watching the NBA game live, as long with the
trailer. This cross promotion helped gain awareness for the movie because of
the cross promotion marketing they enacted at the NBA game, where people, and a
future audience, already had their eyes peeled and then seen the trailer. Even
the singer Kendrick Lamar performed “All the Stars” ft. SZA, which was one of
the movie’s soundtrack songs, at a college football national championship
match. This is an example of cross promotion and it also helped boost the
awareness of the movie. When I heard the ending to Black Panther, I was
realizing that I know this song and I thought that that was amazing. Marketing
helps the film and film industry interact with the audience.
Next up, to understand how important marketing is, I shall
prove it with statistics. For example, Spider-Man: Homecoming had a massive
amount of money made shown through box office numbers of $880,166,350 USD made
worldwide. This was partly thanks to marketing, which was used through the
production of toys and action figures related to the characters in the movie.
One key move from the marketing team was that they started the production and
distribution of them before the movie came out to create intense hype for the
movie even before it came out. They even had synergy with Cinnamon Toast Crunch
to advertise the movie through toys that came inside the cereal boxes.
Additionally, Jurassic World is one of the most prominent
movies of all time. The movie dominated the box office by become the third
largest grossing movie of all time. The movie had a ton of marketing especially
through merchandising. They had cross promotion with many companies such as
Lego to make toys, Mike and Ike to make Jurassic World themed candy, even Dairy
Queen had a blizzard created after the movie, Jurassic World. Even video games
and apps were produced for it. When the movie was out and selling in high
amounts, I witnessed the large amounts of cross promotion in forms of toys in
most stores I went to. Another notable marketing strategy was to make limited
edition DVD sets that came with figurines along with posters to make people
more invested in purchasing them, then watching the movie. Another interesting
and ingenious marketing strategy was creating an Easter Egg Hunt given out on
Easter holiday, and was completely online, allowing people an easier chance to
try the Easter Egg Hunt out. With this much effort put into marketing, and the
results of when the movie came out and made its way into being the third
largest grossing movie of all time, there starts to be a connection between
two, marketing and success.
Alternatively, an example of how marketing did not save a
movie from disaster is the movie Ugly Dolls. With more than 100 promotional
products and partners for the movie and STX Entertainment, and the studio
launching the movie, claiming all merchandising/licensing rights for toys and
other products relating to the movie, the movie was everywhere. However, even
with all that marketing, the movie produced an estimated $8.5 million dollars,
which was around $2,330 per screen across 3,652 screens on launching day. It
was a flop, and it was partly thanks to its release date, which was around Avengers:
Endgame, and the movie Pokémon Detective Pikachu releasing 5 days after the
release of Ugly Dolls. Marketing is important to a film’s success; however, it
cannot be saved only through that, it must have strategic release dates and the
movie of course must be good itself. Done differently, the movie Fantastic
Beasts had excellent marketing, but was released and produced properly so that
it was an enormous hit. It had lots of synergy and cross promotion with other
companies such as AT&T, and Google. Plus, it was strategically marketed to
be in close relations with the enormous franchise of Harry Potter. Then, Harry
Potter fans were attracted to this movie, which is quite a big fanbase, so that
boosted views by an enormous number. I realized some similarity since I thought
of Harry Potter when I saw the movie trailer and movie. This connection in
strategic marketing helped Fantastic Beasts thrive exponentially. Two different
movies, both with excellent marketing, but it also depends on the movie, its
release date, and how strategically smart the studios behind it was to market
their films/movies to determine a movie’s success.
Concluding, marketing is crucially important to a film’s
success and just in general how the film is looked at and treated. Marketing in
large amounts and strategically correct will almost guarantee a chance at the
movie being a hit. However, if done wrong, as proven through an example, can
almost completely waste what was used up to make the movie and any other plans
made. Marketing, in my opinion, is one of the most important parts of the film
media area and it must be done correctly to be used effectively.
