Selina's Super-Awesome Foundation Portfolio 2008-09: Film Marketing

The purpose of marketing is to maximise the target audience for a film and to therefore maximise its earnings i.e. to make as much money as possible.
Most blockbuster movies already have an audience. The studio has pumped millions of dollars into the movie because they already know people will go and see it; because it is based on a media text that already has an audience. This may be a previous film (eg Spiderman 2's audience will consist of many people who are fans of the first movie), or the source material (the first Spiderman movie was based on the comic book of the same name created by Stan Lee in 1962). However, the studios need a guarantee that the film is going to be make not just a small profit, but a comfortable one, and after spending, say $100 million dollars on a movie they will usually spend around half as much again on marketing it.

The 5 Ps of marketing are:

*Price, Product, Placing, Promotion, Publicity*

Price aside (the price of a cinema ticket varies between movie theatres, not necessarily films), the other three are all vital elements of a film marketing campaign. It is possible to add in publicity to a film marketing campaign although this is technically a part of promotion which is not the direct result of a financial deal made by the studio.

Product A film needs to be clearly identifiable in its marketing — genre, stars, story, special effects, style all need to be presented to the audience so they can select the film on the basis of content.

Placing A film has to have the right release date — Christmas for a Christmas movie etc. Its release date will also depend on what else is being released at the same time; films have to fight it out for cinema screens. It would be pointless releasing any big blockbuster movie the same weekend as MIB II simply because cinema goers would choose between it and the competition, potentially halving the box office takings.

Promotion for films takes many forms:

Print advertising (posters & ads in newspapers & magazines)
Trailers (screened at cinemas & on TV/radio)
Free screenings to select audience (to spread word-of-mouth)
Internet sites, viral marketing, links on blogs
Merchandising — the list is endless books, t-shirts, food, soundtrack CDs, computer games, toys, cars, mobile phones, anything that can be associated with the brand of the movie

Publicity The publicity department of a studio will spend a great deal of time and money trying to gain maximum benefit from the following forms of publicity: