1. Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied.
Marketing is one of the most crucial aspects of releasing a theatrical film. Marketing can determine how well your film will do at the box office. This makes perfect sense in that if people don’t know about your film, they obviously won’t go and see it. The same thing applies if you do have lots of marketing, but it’s bad marketing. Three common techniques are used to promote films. These are cross-media advertisements, merchandising, and putting out your trailer on television.
Cross-media advertisements are beneficial in multiple ways. They not only promote your film but help to promote another product as well. Take the 2018 film, Black Panther, for example. The car company Lexus paired up with the movie to promote their new 2018 Lexus LS 500. The car appeared in advertisements for the movie and the characters in the movies appeared in commercials for the car. The car even ended up in several scenes in the actual film itself. This helped to sell more of the new car, while the film benefitted from it because they were paid to include the car in their film and advertisements. Another example of cross-media comes from another Marvel film, Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2. The ice cream and fast-food chain Dairy Queen paired up with the film to promote their ice cream, or more specifically their signature product, the Blizzard. The Guardians of the Galaxy logo and characters were printed on the cups and the film even got a Blizzard flavor made in its honor. The results of this cross-media were like the cross between Black Panther and Lexus.
The second technique films use for marketing is merchandising. The creation of toys or other products such as clothing can help to promote your film. Some examples of merchandising in the film industry are Jurassic World and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The film Jurassic World is a sequel/reboot to the Jurassic Park trilogy. Due to the film being centered around dinosaurs, it made sense to create and sell lots of dinosaur toys for the film. These toys would not only bring in tons of sales for the company but could promote the film as well. Parents who buy the toys would likely also want to see the movie that the toys are based on, therefore increasing box office sales. For the film Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, a prequel to the Harry Potter film series, merchandising was used for clothing and jewelry. Stores like Hot Topic were given the right to sell Fantastic Beasts inspired shirts, hoodies, and other articles of clothing. On websites like harrypottershop.com, you could buy jewelry that was inspired by jewelry characters wore in the film. This type of merchandising worked pretty much the same way as Jurassic World’s did. The company got increased profits from these sales while also having their film promoted.
Last, companies use trailers and commercials to promote the films to audiences through television. Universal Pictures is the company behind the major film franchise, Despicable Me. The franchise is so big that a spinoff movie called Minions was created, which focused on the little yellow characters that were always with the main character of franchise, Gru. The trailers for the film were very crucial in bringing about the film’s box office success. The film’s trailers were featured in commercials for shows like “The Voice” and the trailer was even shown in a Super Bowl commercial. All these advertisements in major television led to the film making about $115.2 million dollars its opening weekend, which was huge for an animated movie. It’s safe to say that the all the trailers and promoting on television this film had is what helped the film reach that box office success.
Overall, marketing in films is very essential in creating greater profits and box office success. Cross-media allows film companies to not only promote their own film, but to promote other products as well. Merchandising creates another opportunity for profit while still promoting a film, and trailers and commercials on big television channels and programs help to increase your opening weekend box office revenue. Without good marketing, it would be difficult for a film to make its way and survive in the industry.
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