A total information glut has also affected the film market. Films compete for the viewer’s attention not only with the most exciting script or popular actors, but also with advertising budgets. Legends and sometimes real worlds are created around films where fans can immerse themselves and become a part of the project. An advertising campaign to promote a film is more than even the film itself, it includes it like a complex piece of jewelry includes the main stone – the movie itself. And besides it, there is the film project’s website, its community in social networks and channel on Youtube, various merchandise based on the film, and no less diverse print products, various teasers, trailers, TV-spots, backstages, soundtracks, and interviews with the creators. All of this is distributed through all kinds of digital and analog channels, posted around the city and hanging on bigboards, sold in stores and distributed in maccams, turned into computer games, books, comics and applications for mobile devices, in general, the experienced film “marketers” use all modern advertising opportunities in order to find and interest their viewers.
With the Internet stepping on the heels of traditional linear TV – although it can no longer be considered full-fledged due to viewing linear TV channels on tablets, for example – the issue of proper targeting and advertising is more acute than ever. If we distance ourselves and talk about services and products in general, marketers still can not give a clear answer – where to advertise the brand? Some will stubbornly argue that television remains as popular as it was 20 years ago. Others – that with the right selection of audiences and configuring the campaign can be done advertising in social networks. Others will say that it is important to combine both options – TV and the Internet. And probably the latter will be right.
The creators of the tape “Iron Man 2” combined all the clips shown in one big trailer, where each important segment is highlighted in the “hotspot” – inside you could get the most information about the upcoming details of the film and what was left out.
Steven Spielberg and J.J. Abrams made a teaser a month before filming of Super 8. The link to the video was coded in the trailer for “Iron Man.” At the end of the trailer, before the Super 8 logo appeared, the film was fast-forwarded to “The scariest thing I’ve ever seen”, which pointed to the website scariestthingieversaw.com, where a 16-bit microcomputer emulator was loaded into a browser window. Users pulled numbers, names, file names, commands and geographic coordinates from there in search of clues. The information on the site was updated and then led to another site with new puzzles. Over the course of a year, fans explored the constantly updating trailer, figuring out what the movie would actually be about. The filming of “Super 8” was disguised as the shooting of two other, fictional, movies.
The promoters of “Thor,” the first of the Thor franchise and one of the Marvel Universe’s Avengers films, spoofed the once-popular VW automaker’s Youtube video of a boy in a Darth Vader suit who thought he had superpowers. The boy was replaced with a Thor boy who plays with a hammer instead of a laser sword. In a short period of time, the clip garnered nearly 2.5 million views.
However, this is hardly the only example – this territory is open to experimentation. It’s not so much that parody videos of movies aren’t popular – on the contrary, they are! But already after the release of the film! As, for example, was the case with “Batman”, “The Martian” and the film “Mad Max: Fury Road”. And a successful promotion, of course, involves advertising “before” rather than “after.”
In 2010, Lionsgate relied on viral spots to promote The Last Exorcism. On a popular dating video chat room, an attractive girl would introduce herself to guys, but at the most interesting point would turn into a horrible creature, growling, rolling her eyes out the back of her head and breaking her neck. People’s reactions were recorded and posted on Youtube. With a production budget of $1.8 million, the film grossed nearly $68 million at the box office.
One of the most successful alternative ad campaigns was for Neill Blomkamp’s District 9 in 2009. (District 9) in 2009. The director wasn’t well known at the time, so the team developed an original promo. Since the film is about an alien ghetto on Earth, large billboards with the message “People Only” began to be installed in various major cities to advertise it. In this way they managed to attract the attention not only of those who were waiting for the film, but also of people who were completely distant from the subject in general – they began to wonder what these billboards were and eventually learned about the film.