Marketing

How important is marketing to a films success or failure at the box office?

Marketing is one of the most important factors of a films success or failure, it is so important because it raises the awareness of your film.  Some of the things that fall under the marketing ‘umbrella’ are things like billboards, posters, viral marketing and trailers.

Another one is publicity, this is arguably the most important thing in a films success, and this is because it is the public’s perception of the film. One example of bad publicity is the film Batman and Robin. This film had a review by a blogger called Harry Knowles; this review slated the film and the results of this review reflected in the films gross. This created a bad perception of the film to the public so no one went to see it

A film can spend as much money on marketing as it can on making it. For example, Avatar spent $223,000,000 and spent $237,000,000 on the production of the film. This is very evident because before the film come out it was everywhere, the hype was so big for this film because it offered a new cinematic experience with the groundbreaking 3D. This marketing also made a clear perception that it was going to be big because everyone was talking about it, audiences expecting a new experience and they got it, however the plot wasn’t different, but the visuals were. The marketing campaign was very good for this film, as everyone had heard about it, the marketing was consistent, and the posters and images released kept to the colours of blue. The trailer allowed us to see exactly what the film was about, it allowed us identify with characters before even watching the film to obviously make us want to go and see the film. The film was also known as ‘James Cameron’s Avatar’ this lets the audience know that the director is a star and is likely to be a good film. Even the title sends a clear message what it is about.

John Carter had a very bad marketing campaign, this is the reason for the colossal flop at the box office, and one reason is that the film was basically unknown, the film had nearly no marketing, it wasn’t in Disney shops and it wasn’t on Disney channels. The trailer was very poor and ambiguous, I don’t know whether it was to keep the audience guessing or it was just a poor trailer. It had 4 posters, one main poster and three teasers, they each looked like different genres and both had different colours. There was also no concrete age with the marketing, the audience aim was younger children but most of the audience were over 25. The title was originally ‘John Carter Of Mars’ but changed last minute. This title is very vague and doesn’t tell us what the film is about. This film had an opportunity to be a success with chances for horizontal integration and merchandise opportunities like action figures, games and cartoons, but the marketing was so bad nobody knew about it. Another reasons it flopped because the film didn’t go to ‘Comic Con’ this is where all the big films are released. The films didn’t do well because there was no relationship between customers.