On all levels, it can be agreed that marketing has a significant impact on the media area of film. It’s very often that when you are browsing a grocery isle or watching television that you would see advertising or marketing for different films. Whether it be to increase attention drawn to a film or to gain more profit in the long run, marketing and advertising are very often used for films. Marketing allows for movies to gain traction and as a result, more net earnings. Most if not all films have some sort of marketing to allow for these results, making the marketing a crucial part of the film distribution process.
One example of a film that exemplifies the importance of marketing is Spider-man Homecoming. The movie was a massive success with a worldwide box office amount of around $880,166,350. That could largely be attributed to the use of marketing in its release stages. One way they created hype for the movie was releasing toys and action figures from the movie before it premiered. This helped to get the attention of the movies target audience of children and get them to want to watch the movie. Another example of how they got the attention they did was through the partnership they had with cinnamon toast crunch, a breakfast cereal brand, which included toys from the movie inside their cereal boxes. This was a prime example of synergy. Uses of marketing like this have a large effect on a film’s success.
Another film that shows the importance of marketing in film is Furious 7. This movie had several ways of marketing that all held importance and brought in revenue. An example of cross promotion they did was teaming up with the phone brand OPPO to host events and make posters. These promotional events and posters would draw in an audience and gain the movie some traction. They also teamed up with Forza Horizon, which is a video game to release a car pack in the game. This also gained attention to the movie because those who play a racing game, might like a movie that also features cars that they see in the games. It reaches the demographic that the movie is aiming for since people who like cars would probably like the movie and they would also probably be playing that game. The box office of the film was around approximately $1.515 billion, which was a success all things considered. A major part of this success was definitely due to the marketing.
In some cases, however, the marketing doesn’t have much of an impact on the film’s success. In the movie Uglydolls, the movie had a lot of potentially good marketing, with posters depicting actors voicing the characters, many of them being famous or singers. Showing the singing voice actors in ads made sure that it was known that the movie had songs and was aimed at kids. They even partnered up with Cold Stone Creamery and had an ice cream flavor to promote the movie. Despite this, the movie didn’t do so well in the box office. At the start of the launch of the movie, it only netted around $8.5 million according to an article on Cartoon Brew. This isn’t very good considering the movie is the second-widest independent animation release. However, this is only one example of marketing not helping much and considering there are other factors going into the movie not doing well it isn’t a full reflection of the importance of marketing in film.
Overall, marketing has a significant impact on the media area of film and is shown to be of some importance to film’s success. Whether it’s increasing attention the film gets or gaining more profit in the long run, marketing and advertising are have much importance in the media area of film.
