Successful media products depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices. How far do you agree?
Marketing and distribution of a film is what ultimately makes a film a success because it creates a buzz for the film. The marketing adds to the audiences’ suspense and the build up or excitement for the film and the films release date. However, it can be argued that the final product is what fans and critics enjoy the most and will remember most, not how the film actually got there due to its marketing campaign and the films distributors.
An example of a film which had a hugely successful marketing and distribution campaign was the sci-fi thriller ‘Prometheus’. The film was directed by Ridley Scott (the director of ‘Alien’) and distributed by 20th Century Fox- one of the Hollywood ‘big six’ production companies- which has a lot of experience working with big budget films. They teamed up with Brandywine productions in order to produce and distribute the ‘Alien’ franchise and so are used to working with this type of film genre and therefore had a lot of pressure on them to make the film great. In order to get publicity for the film they spent around $50 million on advertising, $30 million of which was raised by marketing support companies such as Amazon. The marketing campaign began in July 2011 with the film not being released until June 2012. It began with images and footage of the film being shown at a film conference presented by the main cast and crew; Ridley Scott, Naoomi Rapace and Charlize Theron. Also, a teaser poster was released with the caption ‘the search for our beginning could lead to our end’ however was taken down a few weeks later creating confusion and suspense for the films release. The official trailer was released in December 2011 (soon after an incomplete trailer was leaked online- a publicity stunt?) which created a huge buzz for the film. On top of all of this, a viral advertising campaign was started which included a variety of short videos used to cause huge excitement in the build up to the film. One of the viral ads was a speech by one of the main characters, Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce) in a futuristic TED talk which was designed by the director Ridley Scott and produced by his son Luke Scott. As well as this, at the science fiction convention WonderCon, people who attended the film panel were all given ‘Weyland Corporations’- the business owned by Peter Weyland in the film- business cards which directed them to a website which eventually led them to a video presented as an advertisement for the ‘David 8’ robot which features in the film (played by Michael Fassbender.) Later in the year (and closer to the films release date) an extended version of the video was released listing all of the qualities and functions of ‘David’. From this, a twitter account was created for David which allowed twitter users to ask the character/robot questions. Also, two more videos; one of Rapace starring as scientist Shaw and the other of the ships captain Jack preparing for a mission were all released consecutively in order to create excitement about the film. They needed to have a large advertising campaign because the actors used in the film were fairly unknown and wouldn’t have fan bases large enough to ensure the film would make a huge impact in the cinema. Because of this, a marketing campaign was needed to raise awareness which is why so much money was put into the advertising.
I think that marketing and distribution played a huge part in the success of ‘Prometheus.’ Without the huge amount of money backing the marketing campaign, the film would not have had anywhere near the same amount of success and publicity that it did. Especially not having a huge actor playing a lead role in the film, it was vital that the film was marketed well in order for people to know about the film. The only real fan base which would have been likely to have heard about the film without the marketing campaign would have been fans of the ‘Alien’ franchise and, although this audience would have been big, it wouldn’t have been big enough to have made it the success which it needed to be; managing to gross over $400,000,000 worldwide.
On the other hand, a very low budget film such as ‘Kill List’ which was written and directed by fairly unknown director Ben Wheatley, didn’t have the finance for a huge marketing campaign. Having a budget of only £500,000, there was hardly any money for advertising and marketing so they relied heavily on word of mouth and adverts in small, art house cinemas to create publicity. They spent a tiny amount of money on a trailer and a poster which would have been used as the only method of publicity. The film trailer was only shown on a few screens and was put on YouTube to appeal to a large audience, however other that there was no real push for marketing.
Like ‘Prometheus,’ ‘Kill List’ had a cast of unknown actors which would have a very small (if existent) fan base. The cast included Neil Maskell, Michael Smiley and MyAnna Buring who are all very unknown. The premier of the film was shown at the Film 4 Fright Fest in 2011 to an audience of people who are interested in crime/thriller/horror films (which is why it was shown at this film ‘festival’). Film 4 funded and produced the film which is why they wanted it to be successful and therefore why they decided to show it at their festival. Being a low budget film with an extremely low budget for advertising would have been a big reason for the lack of money the film managed to gross which was little over £16,000.
However the lack of marketing may not have been the only reason for the lack of success of ‘Kill List’. Although it received some positive reviews, a lot of critics thought that the story and plot of the film was poor. Some said ‘it feels like a better film than it was’ whereas some said it was ‘hideous’ (which can be taken in either a good or bad context). I don’t think that any more money being spent on advertising, marketing and promotion of the film would have made anyone think that the plot was any better. Therefore, it can be argued that the promotion isn’t the most important part of a film, it could be the actual storyline which leaves the biggest impact on the viewer and is the most important thing in the film industry.
A fairly low budget film which was a success even though it had a fairly low budget was ‘Kick Ass’ directed by Matthew Vaughan and written by Jane Goldman who are both British. The film cost £30 million and grossed over £38 million. They had an advertising campaign which included posters and a film trailer which was shown in the UK and the USA. Because the film was based on a comic book series, fans of the comic books will have been interested in going to see the film, however a lot of people wouldn’t have known about the comic books and so, for them, marketing would have played a huge part in them hearing about the film. A film with a relatively unknown cast; Aaron Johnson, Chloe Moretz and (the only fairly well known actor in the film) Nicholas Cage requires marketing for the film to become a hit and, although the end result of the film received great reviews and a sequel on the way, is the main reason for the films success. Without the trailers and the posters and the interviews, ‘Kick Ass’ wouldn’t have been as big a hit as it was.
Overall, I think it is more important for big budget films to market and promote on a large scale than it is for low budget films as the need for success is much greater. This is because the amount that they need to make back on the film is severely larger than the low budget films. Therefore they need to appeal to a wider market and they need more people to hear about the film so that they will go and see it and the only way for them to market the film on such a scale would be to spend a large chunk of the budget on promotion. This way they can promote the film worldwide and appeal to a huge audience. This is only achieved by good marketing and distribution.
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