How
Important Is Marketing to a Film’s Success or Failure At The Box Office?
Plan:
Publicity can’t be controlled, Marketing creates perception is
controlled
Batman and Robin
Identify, Satisfy and Keep customer
Avatar – Digital Marketing, Interactivity, trailer made sense
John Carter – Posters made no sense, trailer made no sense
Identify, Satisfy and Keep customer
Avatar – Digital Marketing, Interactivity, trailer made sense
John Carter – Posters made no sense, trailer made no sense
---------------------------------------------
Film studios can try to create a
perception of their movie by using marketing and this helps to advance sales in
tickets and products for the movie. Hollywood is a business and it needs its
customers so that it can function, so through market research, Studios try to
identify their audience and satisfy them so they spend more money.
Publicity can also affect popularity but it is different because the studio cannot control it and with the recent developments in social networking and interactivity making it easier to share opinions and movie reviews, it is becoming more of a problem for studios. A prime example of publicity noticeably affecting a movie is Harry Knowles’ “Ain’t It Cool” review of Batman and Robin from 1997. After his extremely negative review was posted popularity of the film went down by 63% and Warner Bros. accused Harry of destroying the film’s chances.
Avatar was the opposite of this, it received amazing reviews and this was one of the many reasons it was so popular
This just shows how positively or negatively publicity can effect a movie release.
Publicity wasn’t the only thing that led to Avatar’s success at the box office however. The studio spent $223,000,000 on marketing the movie alone. Moviegoers were shown a 16 minute preview of the film and on the same day Ubisoft announced a game and Mattel announced toys. There was also a virtual marketing campaign with the option of retweeting or tagging the movie in exchange for a track from the film’s soundtrack and it soon became the most talked about thing on twitter. This meant that it could spread to more people and then it would remain the topic of many a conversation and so the film would gain more audience.
The interactive website was also popular as it let the audience connect with the movie and find Easter eggs, it kept things interesting and changing and this caused excitement and gained the film an audience before it was even released.
The trailer for the film went straight to number one on iTunes and the reason for this was that it explained exactly what the audience was to expect in the film. They knew they were going in the cinema to see an action packed, sci-fi fantasy film that was directed by James Cameron who is considered one of the all time greats. Overall Avatar’s marketing was genius and a key factor to it’s success. If it had not have been so well done, the film could’ve suffered greatly as demonstrated by John Carter, Disney and the world’s biggest movie failure.
John Carter’s marketing campaign wasn’t thought out and was extremely confusing. The posters had a different design each time with multiple different characters and it was hard to distinguish what the actual genre was, unlike Avatar who’s posters featured the same characters and made it clear that it was a sci-fi fantasy. The trailer was also confusing and generally terrible in comparison to Avatar. There’s no clear story, the audience isn’t made aware of who the character’s are. Who is the good guy? Who is the bad guy? Where is the story set? None of it is explained and by the end you know even less about John Carter than you did before seeing it.
This bad marketing had a huge detrimental effect on the film’s popularity. There was no virtual marketing and none of the interactivity that made Avatar so successful, in fact, many people hadn’t even heard of John Carter before it failed. I have seen John Carter but I had never seen a single poster for it and when I watched the trailer I had no idea what I was going in for. I only saw the movie for it’s star Taylor Kitsch and since he isn’t well known or of star quality, even having him in the lead role would not attract much of an audience.
Marketing is extremely important to a film’s success because without an audience a film is bound to fail. The audience is created and made to feel included by a good marketing campaign. The quality of the film itself doesn’t usually matter at first, as long as it pulls in an audience and the only way it can do that is with a good trailer, posters and other general marketing. Disney didn’t use any synergy with John Carter, there were no toys or games announced unlike Avatar, there was no interactivity on the websites so no one was talking about it and without a doubt, this was a key factor in John Carter’s failure
Publicity can also affect popularity but it is different because the studio cannot control it and with the recent developments in social networking and interactivity making it easier to share opinions and movie reviews, it is becoming more of a problem for studios. A prime example of publicity noticeably affecting a movie is Harry Knowles’ “Ain’t It Cool” review of Batman and Robin from 1997. After his extremely negative review was posted popularity of the film went down by 63% and Warner Bros. accused Harry of destroying the film’s chances.
Avatar was the opposite of this, it received amazing reviews and this was one of the many reasons it was so popular
This just shows how positively or negatively publicity can effect a movie release.
Publicity wasn’t the only thing that led to Avatar’s success at the box office however. The studio spent $223,000,000 on marketing the movie alone. Moviegoers were shown a 16 minute preview of the film and on the same day Ubisoft announced a game and Mattel announced toys. There was also a virtual marketing campaign with the option of retweeting or tagging the movie in exchange for a track from the film’s soundtrack and it soon became the most talked about thing on twitter. This meant that it could spread to more people and then it would remain the topic of many a conversation and so the film would gain more audience.
The interactive website was also popular as it let the audience connect with the movie and find Easter eggs, it kept things interesting and changing and this caused excitement and gained the film an audience before it was even released.
The trailer for the film went straight to number one on iTunes and the reason for this was that it explained exactly what the audience was to expect in the film. They knew they were going in the cinema to see an action packed, sci-fi fantasy film that was directed by James Cameron who is considered one of the all time greats. Overall Avatar’s marketing was genius and a key factor to it’s success. If it had not have been so well done, the film could’ve suffered greatly as demonstrated by John Carter, Disney and the world’s biggest movie failure.
John Carter’s marketing campaign wasn’t thought out and was extremely confusing. The posters had a different design each time with multiple different characters and it was hard to distinguish what the actual genre was, unlike Avatar who’s posters featured the same characters and made it clear that it was a sci-fi fantasy. The trailer was also confusing and generally terrible in comparison to Avatar. There’s no clear story, the audience isn’t made aware of who the character’s are. Who is the good guy? Who is the bad guy? Where is the story set? None of it is explained and by the end you know even less about John Carter than you did before seeing it.
This bad marketing had a huge detrimental effect on the film’s popularity. There was no virtual marketing and none of the interactivity that made Avatar so successful, in fact, many people hadn’t even heard of John Carter before it failed. I have seen John Carter but I had never seen a single poster for it and when I watched the trailer I had no idea what I was going in for. I only saw the movie for it’s star Taylor Kitsch and since he isn’t well known or of star quality, even having him in the lead role would not attract much of an audience.
Marketing is extremely important to a film’s success because without an audience a film is bound to fail. The audience is created and made to feel included by a good marketing campaign. The quality of the film itself doesn’t usually matter at first, as long as it pulls in an audience and the only way it can do that is with a good trailer, posters and other general marketing. Disney didn’t use any synergy with John Carter, there were no toys or games announced unlike Avatar, there was no interactivity on the websites so no one was talking about it and without a doubt, this was a key factor in John Carter’s failure
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