Assess the importance of marketing in
the media area you have studied.
Marketing in the film
industry is very important. It is used to promote and promote awareness for
upcoming films that are going to be released. However, many question whether marketing
is truly essential for films to grow and gain money.
To
start, without marketing, most films would not have the traction it has today.
Marketing is important because it can grow the audience of the film, and it can
help the movie do better in the box office. For example, Spider-man Homecoming
made $880,166,350 in the box office. This would not happen without marketing.
The marketing techniques Sony Pictures used to promote this film was using
synergy, cross-media promotions, and merchandising. They used synergy by
partnering with cinnamon toast crunch to promote their film while people eat
the cereal. This important to the film company because many people buying this
type of cereal would see this branding and it might have pulled more viewers which
would result in more money. They used cross-media promotion by making a music
soundtrack and releasing it the same day as the movie. This brought in viewers
to the film by using music from the artist Michael Giacchino. Some of his fans
might have liked the music and could’ve checked out the movie. The
merchandising helped the most. The marketing team used toys to promote the
movie by getting into a younger audience for the film. The marketing team also partnered
with Sony’s gaming market to produce a game for the PS4. This created a buzz
for the movie and increased profit for the film.
Another
example of films that use marketing techniques to help build profits is Furious
7 and Jurassic World. They are both distributed by Universal Studios and
released in 2015. Together they made $3,185,448,308 in the box office.
Marketing did play a big role in this. They both had trailers and posters
informing audiences of the release and both used many other different marketing
skills. They used video games to broaden the audience and that brought in many
other viewers. However, they didn’t use all of the same marketing skills.
Because Jurassic World wanted to have a broad audience, they merchandised toys
and figurines to attract younger viewers. Furious 7, on the other hand, used
shirts and accessories to gain traction. Both films also used cross-promotion
to promote the film, but Jurassic World branded on food while Furious 7
partnered with a phone company. As you can see these efforts to market both
films paid off greatly maximizing profits for Universal Pictures.
The last
example is Lego Movie 2: The second part. The sequel did not make as much money
as its predecessor. It only made around $100,000,000 in the box office which
was around 270,000,000 less than its predecessor. The marketing may have
something to do with that. The marketing consisted of the basic things that
every other movie does including its predecessor. It used merchandising and cross-media
promotion. They only released Lego sets and a video game which resulted in the
movie not standing out. People were not
motivated to watch the film because they thought it might be the same thing as
the first movie. They also partnered with a few companies to promote the film,
but it still did not perform like the prequel. The lack of marketing resulted
in a huge setback for the film’s release.
To
conclude, marketing is essential in the film industry. I have watched all of
the movies except the Lego Movie 2. The marketing was an influence on me
because I watched most of those movies because of the trailers and the
promotions and the Lego Movie 2 did not stand out to me as the others did. Most
films do well because of the promotion and traction it gains and it would not
be like that without marketing.
