Marketing Essay Question

How important is marketing to a film’s success or failure at the box office?

Marketing of a film is the process of performing market research, selling products to customers and promoting them via advertising to enhance sales. An integral part of the Hollywood machine and helps build strong relationships between customers. It is used to identify the customer, satisfy the customer and keep the customer. Film studios mostly spend a lot on their marketing campaigns in order to get the film into the public’s consciousness. There are different types of marketing campaigns that studios have control of, e.g. viral and digital marketing. But there is a different aspect that can’t be controlled, this is called publicity. Publicity is the deliberate attempt to manage the public's perception of a subject. Publicity cannot be controlled by the studios. Instead, it is created and controlled by those within the media. This can benefit the successful impact of a film, but at the same time publicity can destroy it.  

An example of this would be the ’Batman and Robin’ film. It was deemed a success judging from the opening weekend’s figures, which came in at $42 million. But Harry Knowles, a blogger for a website: ‘Ainitcoolnews’ gave a negative review of the film and his thoughts were read by many people,  giving an all round negative perception of the film. This is was transparent by the second weekend’s box office figures of ‘Batman and Robin’, which came in at just $15 million. This was a 64 percent decrease from the opening weekend’s figures. Warner brothers accused Knowles of sabotaging the chances of ‘Batman and Robin‘. The film was declared a financial success, but it did not make as much money as expected. This is down to two factors: terrible film and negative publicity.  We can see this that publicity somewhat determines has a significant role in deciding the success or failure of a film. 


Studios can  spend almost as much on a film’s marketing as they do producing it, a prime example of this would be Avatar.  A target audience must be identified before marketing starts so the studios needs and wants can be matched with that audience. One of the most important aspects of marketing is to create a perception of the film in the audience’s minds. If the campaign for the film is perceived in a certain way, people can be convinced to pay and watch the film.  Avatar was marketed brilliantly through a digital marketing campaign. This involves the film being told about and interacted with through social media and forum websites etc. Social media allows the film companies to target a huge range of people , and these users can promote the film themselves through sharing on face book or re tweeting on twitter etc. This means that the public can contribute to the perception of the film.

Films with bad marketing campaigns tend not to be successful at the box office. An example of this would be Disney’s John Carter. The film’s posters were a downfall and people were left confused when looking at them. This is because firstly the unmemorable title, and the conventions of the film itself. The genre, narrative style, stars, themes, content etc is not made clear and may leave audiences confused about the  film.  Disney also failed to capitalise on the horizontally integrated business they have to use to really promote and market this film. Disney made no effort to tackle the negativity surrounding John Carter, resulting in one of the biggest flops in the history of film.

So, marketing is important in determining the success or failure of a film. If a film’s marketing campaign is well structured and proves a hit, the film is more than likely to be a success. If the campaign isn’t put together well by studios,  the film will be perceived by the public to be terrible. Resulting in a failure at the box office.