Marketing plays a fairly important role when it comes to the film industry. A good marketing campaign can lead to major increases in box office revenue and excitement for films. Marketing also allows for a variety of promotion whether that be synergy or cross-promotion.
The marketing process is designed to try and get people to go see the movie. The film studios main goal with a film is to gain a profit from this idea that they produced. Marketing is used to target certain audiences to bump that revenue. For example, when it comes to Black Panther, Marvel Studios tried a unique approach to attract different audiences. They hosted an event at New York Fashion Week where they showcased outfits inspired by the costumes from the movie. Black Panther is a superhero movie but with this approach they tried marketing towards people who are interested in fashion. People who are interested in fashion and people who are interested in superhero movies are two very different demographics but Marvel used this marketing technique to try and attract a group of people who may typically not be interested in their films. Spiderman Homecoming used toys to market towards children. A huge age group studios tend to target are children. Marketing towards a younger audience through the use of toys is a smart move seeing that’s what children are mostly interested in at their age. All these methods or appealing to other audiences is used to build up hype for the film. The more hype there is for something the more people want it. The box office for these 2 films back up that their marketing campaigns sparked a good amount of interest from a bunch of people. Black Panther went on to make approximately 1.3 billion dollars while Spiderman Homecoming ended up making around 880 million dollars. Both massive wins for Marvel Studios.
Marketing is also vital when it comes to companies working together. At the end of the day Studios want money. Many studios will promote with their in-house companies to promote a film while others will cross-promote with other companies to gain more interest for their film. Universe Studios through the help of Comcast, the conglomerate their housed under, used synergy with NBC where they allowed them to run the previous Jurassic movies and run sneak previous with the cast of the film. This form of promotion helps both subsidiaries seeing that it brings more attention towards Jurassic World seeing that it attracts the viewers who watch NBC and brings more viewers towards NBC seeing that it attracts their fans, ultimately benefiting Comcast their parent company. The promotion on both sides is an effort to get more people interested in Jurassic World and boost the amount of money made. With Beauty and the Beast, Disney used Cross Media Convergence by releasing a soundtrack for the film and used cross promotion with Kohl’s to sell exclusive merchandise from the film. Black Panther also released a soundtrack and allowed Kendrick Lamar, a famous rapper, to handle the soundtrack. With the means of advertising through different media such as from film to music, and advertising with merchandise it ultimately adds more interest towards these films. People will listen to these soundtracks and want to go see how it relates to the film or will go and buy merchandise due to the hype they have for the film. This marketing benefits both sides but ends up racking up more and more interest for the film. I know personally after I heard “All The Stars” from the Black Panther soundtrack it had me hooked and I couldn’t wait to watch the movie afterwards. Marketing is a major process in the post-production of a film which allows for multiple companies to come together to benefit their needs and benefit the film being released.
At the end of the day Marketing holds an importance when it comes to film. The main goal from it all is to spark up more interest for the film. This allows for more money at the box office and involves many companies working behind the scenes to come together and promote the film.
