Q: Access the importance of
marketing
To my belief the
marketing of a film is extremely important probably the most crucial part of
the post-production. I agree to this because without marketing the potential money
made by a film would be significantly less than with it. Think of it as this,
you can’t be excited to watch a movie and impatient to wait for it if you don’t
even know the movie is coming out. However, a disadvantage to marketing is that
if you don’t have connections and the ability to synergize or use cross-
promotion and cross media convergence in the film’s marketing stage may end
badly and cause a smaller turn out at box office.
Firstly, the
positive of marketing. As I stated the marketing process is what makes the big
bucks in the result. It doesn't matter if the movie is amazing or mediocre. To
be completely honest there are countless number of movies that aren’t good that
make millions and countless numbers of amazing films that made scraps just
because one had the ability to market and make people WANT to watch it and the
others didn’t. I think a great example of perfect marketing execution is the “Furious
7” film. The Film used cross- promotion on an uprising phone brand OPPO and had
the film’s name all over it in special events. The production even cross
promoted on a Video game, “Forza Horizon 2” having DLCs (Downloadable Content)
based on the cars in the movie and even having a quest line. Which in turn made
money and got people excited about the movie. Personally, I played the game and seeing all
the new additions and having a few of the story was a main player in why I
wanted to watch it after I had fallen off from the series after the fifth movie.
The Film made $384 million world-wide. Consider how much less money would’ve
been made without the cross promotion and that was just one part of the
marketing. The production had the actors themselves go out to film festivals
like the SXSW and many other events to talk about the movie. Another film of marketing success would be “Beauty
and the Beast”. This film a lot like “Furious 7” used cross promotion heavily. “Beauty
and the Beast” had movie theme merchandised made in places like kohl's, Morgan
Taylor (movie themed nail polish), and Twinning (put tea flavors in Beauty and
the Beast packaging). It wasn’t only that as they also took to social media
branding the film, and even played reruns of an older film to keep the idea of
this movie fresh through Cross Media Convergence. Also being a Disney
production, the company synergized with under lying companies like ABC to throw
advertisement. “Beauty and the Beast” however out did “Furious 7” making 1.3
billion at box office. So, all things considered in production with the ability
to tranced platforms and market to the full extent the outcome of this
marketing will double or quadruple the revenue from its film.
Onward to the rough
side. How can a production with no ability to synergize or use cross promotion
to the fullest effectively market their film? Well they can’t at least not in
an efficient way or in a way comparable to synergy, cross production. At this
point it kind of just comes down to luck and making appearances at event and of
social media, to just rely on cross media convergence. This is a major con of
marketing because for production this really is make it or break it. The goal
of a movie is to make money and if you can’t market effectively then the money
won’t come. However, there are some films that turned out just fine without a
big marketing stage. For Example, the Film “Moonlight”. I consider this film to
have little marketing because the film was mainly marketed through posters. The
posters had appeared on social media (Cross Media Convergence) and in fact it
was only a set of five but had unusual visuals and were unique, probably why
such little advertisement was so successful. The movie’s budget was $4 million
which is relatively a low one but made $65 million and won three academy
awards. In all honesty many of my peers and myself didn’t know of it till it
came on Netflix then won it’s awards soon after. Which coming from a teenager
who is often on social media, it means a lot that me nor my countless other
classmates and peers knew the movie existed. After seeing the movie, I understand
how it did so well, but looking at it from a logistical standpoint this movie
with barely any marketing really slipped through the cracks and made it big.
However, not so many other films are so lucky it is much more common to movies
with no marketing or even bad marketing.
Lastly, I think at
this point it’s clear that marketing is very important in the money success of
a film even though some films have turned out fine using little to no marketing,
most films make it big because of how well it marketed and even “Moonlight” the
film I used as evidence for films that made it fine without great marketing
still was only initially watched because of what it had marketed till it went
big because how amazing the movie actually is. Which bring me to my final
point... There is a difference between good and bad marketing. “Furious 7”,
“Beauty and the Beast”, and even “Moonlight” with minimal marketing, all
marketed good advertisement that led to their individual success. However,
there is also bad marketing and as marketing being such a critical part to a
production all the work means nothing if you advertise your film terribly. For
example, “Slender Man” was a film by the production company of Sony that made
all the recent Spider-man movies like “Spider-man: Homecoming” and “Spider-man:
Far From Home” both of which had good marketing and were marketed effectively
and efficiently, but unlike these “Slender Man” wasn’t so lucky it was however
marketed greatly and efficiently having the company Sony using its Cross
promotion connections and Synergy especially Cross media convergence. An
example of two of the three being how I personally seen advertisement of the
movie on my PlayStation 4 (a product of Sony). The film also had a decent
budget of $28 million it only made $51 million not even double what was used to
make. For all this marketing it should’ve been way over but when you think of
was the advertisement good enough to even make you want to watch it? The
question is clearly answered as no it was not. Me seeing the advertisement with
my own eyes it was very vague and didn’t even feature the correct movie name it
said “Slender” with the figure of the antagonist and most of the marketing was
similar to this it was vague and confusing but also wasn’t attention grabbing
it was the kind of advertisement that you see and want to ignore instead of
looking at it and being intrigued
To conclude,
Marketing truly is the make it or break it for a production and its film’s box
office show out. Although, having good advertisement in marketing is just as
important as having lots of efficient marketing and being unfortunate enough to
produce bad advertisement in marketing would be worse than having literally no
marketing because of its negative impact on idea of the film. A final mention
would be that even though some films having little to no advertisement were
lucky and had great success, the majority of the film industry successes are
all based on marketing and not being lucky. Also, that even though those that
are lucky and had little marketing the success they have is partly still
because of its good advertisement used in marketing.
