Marketing for films has changed over the years and decades, shifting the focus from traditional posters and trailers, to offering an interactive and a virtual experience for the audience. With the advent of social media and other digital platforms, marketing a film offers advertising executives creative and innovative strategies, using all the resources at their disposal to the fullest.
The Dark Knight, released in the summer of 2008, had an extensive marketing campaign that started roughly fifteen months before the release of the film. Following a formula that did not involve the cast of the film participating in marketing events, but rather shifting it’s focus on the audience, the campaign changed the face of film marketing for the years to come. The marketing strategy of the film involved fans hunting for Joker cards in comic book stores, an allusion to the film’s main villain. The campaign also involved creation of numerous web sites that pertained to certain characters in the film. An example is the creation of the “Harvey Dent for District Attorney” website, a nod to a fictional election that is a major part of the film’s story, with several fans rallying for this fictional candidate. Subsequent marketing also gave the target audience a look at the film’s villain, and the fictional newspaper “The Gotham Times”. A final move involved the Bat-Signal being lit up over the skyline of Chicago, during the film’s premiere.
The second instalment in the Hunger Games series, Catching Fire, released in 2013 expanded on its predecessor’s marketing campaign, increasing it’s reach amongst fans, target audience and potential audiences. The marketing department of this film achieved this through several social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Tumblr. Facebook saw the creation of a profile page of the Capitol, the fictional oppressive government in the film, as well as a subsidiary profile on Instagram pertaining to the fashion culture at the Capitol, termed as CapitolCouture, appealing to a certain section of the film’s audience. The Facebook page and YouTube channel featured high quality photographs of the characters in the film, and tailored and fan made viral videos originating from ‘Capitol TV Productions’, respectively. Tumblr and Pintrest saw users being invited to submit artwork revolving around the film and the numerous characters present.
Deadpool, released in 2016 saw almost a year long marketing campaign preceding its release. Starting off with a first look of the titular character, a full-length trailer was released at San Diego Comic-Con. True to the character’s fourth-wall breaking characteristic, a video sneak peek was attached to Fantastic Four’s trailer. Following this, the film partnered with several companies such as IMAX and Fandango to help promote a new trailer during the Christmas season. Other areas of marketing included usage of billboards promoting the film as a romantic comedy, parodying famous film posters, and public service announcements. The film’s lead actor, Ryan Reynolds also took part in Twitter and Instagram announcing auctions for some of the props in the film, which would be funded for raising awareness about cancer as well as donations for charity.
A marketing campaign is the way by which studios can get their audiences excited for their forthcoming films. In the aforementioned case studies, however, not only did the marketing campaigns get audiences looking forward to the films, but also made audiences part of the story the film was going to showcase, as seen in the case study for The Dark Knight campaign. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire marketing strategy built upon the lore and mythology of the series, getting audiences who aren’t familiar with the series hooked and intrigued. Deadpool’s promotional campaign reflected the dark humour and tone of the film and character, and evidently made use of possibly any form of marketing available at the marketing department’s disposal at the time, such as digital and physical. From these case studies, we can see that a well planned and mapped out viral marketing campaign can produce numerous creative ideas, attract all kinds of audiences, be a memorable campaign, and in turn generate profit for the final product – the film itself.
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