Assess the importance of marketing in the media area you have studied.
Marketing plays a huge role in the film process, it decides how much the income of the movie is going to be depending on how good the film is marketed. But it also affects how the audience will connect with the movie before, during and after the film is released, because if the film is promoted well the viewers will line up to get a ticket, they will enjoy the movie, and lastly they will spread good rumors about it, of course only if the movie meets their expectations. The audience’s expectations will be easier to meet if the film is marketed correctly because marketing is half of the job in order to have a successful film.
As I already said, the audience’s connection with the movie it’s critical when it comes to determine whether or not a film will have success. If the marketing job is done correctly and the audience feels emotionally connected with the movie, they won’t hesitate to go watch it. But if the process is not good enough, the audience will not watch the movie causing troubles regarding the final profit of the film. The movie Furious 7 shows how marketing done in the correct way can result in a huge win when it comes to profit. One of their many brilliant marketing ideas was to have Universal CityWalk present a movie marathon at their AMC movie theater which also featured a first look at one of the cars used in the movie and costumes used by Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson. Universal Studios Hollywood theme park introduced a new ride called “Fast and Furious – Supercharged.” This strategy was used so that they would involve their audience and make them eager about the upcoming movie. Something else that contributed to the huge success of this movie was the song written in memory of Paul Walker, sung by Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth. This song was released two weeks before the movie and it got a lot of attention, it was number one on the billboard charts for 12 consecutive weeks, got 4.2 million streams on Spotify, reached over 1 billion views on YouTube, and was nominated for 3 Grammys and a Golden Globe award. This song emotionally connected the audience with all the cast because the music video included clips from the movie of Paul Walker. Furthermore, another great movie where a lot of hard work was put into the marketing process was Spider-Man: Homecoming. The film was promoted to all the ages through a very thorough way of marketing. They promoted the movie through a video game for PlayStation 4, which is owned by Sony, that came out and raised the hype for the movie especially for teenagers. The film was also advertised to a group of younger people through toys and other products and to do that, Spider-Man: Homecoming cross-promoted with Target. Marvel did an excellent job using synergy as one of the ways to publicize the movie because having Spider-Man partner with Cinnamon Toast Crunch also caught the eye of an older audience like parents, who shop for their children and realize that the new Spider-Man movie is coming out soon and might go with their kids to watch the new movie. Both Furious 7, and Spider-Man: Homecoming did an excellent job in marketing the film. All the marketing techniques used by the films were able to provide them with an incredible profit. In its opening week Furious 7 made a worldwide profit of $384 million. While Spider-Man: Homecoming made a total worldwide profit of $880,166,350.
In addition, marketing is very important regarding the income of the movie, because the better the marketing is the more money the film will make. Sometimes companies focus on quantity, meaning that they will try to market their film as much as possible which sometimes can be good, but it doesn’t always work. It is better to focus on the quality of the marketing process and not the quantity because it can create some problems, for example spending too much money and then not making the profit expected, which will then lead to debts and bankruptcy of the company that produced the film. A perfect example is the movie UglyDolls, the marketing work for this film was not enough to provide the movie a great success. The film didn’t work hard enough and think outside the box, they followed the basic procedures, meaning they just did the standard trailer and some other digital posters that weren’t enough. The film also partnered with a couple of food companies, using the color of the dolls to make a new flavor for their shakes or ice cream. Although they made some efforts to promote the movie, if they dedicated more time to the marketing process, the movie would have had the success it deserved. According to Deadline, UglyDolls had a terrible start, it was launched on almost 3700 screens, but it netted an estimated $8.5 million, or $2,330 per screen. On the contrary, a movie that had a great success was Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 and half of the success is thanks to the plenty of work that was put into marketing. Cross promotion was a big part of the process because the movie cross promoted with some big companies like Ford Motor Company, GEICO, Hasbro, Lego, Dairy Queen and other companies. The cross media convergence with Dairy Queen was one of the biggest as the film was allowed to make its own flavor and print advertisements on the cups. Another big marketing move was the one to have Hasbro, owner of the famous table game Monopoly, make a special edition of the game with the characters on the box and cards. Marvel also publicized the movie through merchandise like t-shirts, posters, phone cases, and water bottles. The icon of the movie is Root, in fact having something with his face printed on it, or meant to advertise the movie and create more hype about it. This incredible marketing work done by Marvel helped this movie to be loved from the audience and also to make a huge profit. The film made a total profit of $863,756,051. To see the difference between a well done marketing work and a poor marketing work we can just observe the difference in profit between UglyDolls, which made a total profit of $32.5 million, and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2, which again made a profit around $863.8 million.
To conclude, marketing is just as important as any other part of the film-making process because it controls the amount of money the movie it’s going to make, but it also controls how the audience feels and connects with the film.
