Film Marketing
What is Film Marketing?
It’s a part of film distribution, you know it by the name promotions, it’s a process through which filmmakers find their audience and sell their movie to them. Not every movie is made for everyone. You cant make The Conjuring and expect schoolgoing kids to watch it, they are not your audience, you didn’t make your movie for them. You made the movie for people who love horror movies, so you have to make sure that your film reaches them. And this is done effectively through film marketing. Since larger studios took over the industry, they have their marketing teams, promoting their movies. But there are film marketing agencies not associated with any significant studios, dedicated to small scale movies or indie movies. You make your movie, you go to them, and they’ll help you sell your film by charging something. Since film marketing is considered one of the essential aspects of media production, it’s not a surprise that marketing alone will cost you a fortune. For example, movies like Visaranai, a low budget movie, the marketing cost exceeded the production cost, and hence it got so popular and even won several international awards. This wouldn’t have been possible with poor marketing.
So now you understand the importance of marketing, let’s discuss types of film marketing,
Digital
It majorly consists of two categories called the Internet and Television. Under the internet you have things like social media, platforms like Facebook, Insta, Twitter etc. where you run your ads, there are chances the someone like this guy will come across your ad and maybe he’ll consider watching your movie in theatres next weekend.
This has been very effective since the pandemic as many movies are shifting towards OTT, at the viewer’s comfort. Teasers and trailers are cut accordingly so that curiosity is created among the audience and will push them towards the theatres or wherever you are releasing your movie.
Next, we have television. The conventional marketing tool, where the content you created for the internet, can be reused and can even have a more extensive reach, considering the internet user ratio. Content like celebrities giving interviews to media executives where they talk about the movie and other stuff like what went into making it. Campaigns are held where stars interact with fans creating positive vibes for the film. This has been popularised by the likes of comic con, an event where new announcements or reveals are made for almost everything related to pop culture. The trailers made for the internet can be broadcasted on television as mentioned earlier, in commercial breaks between the shows.
Here we got posters which are used to convey the movie in one single picture. It may contain themes, quotes, or even the opinions and ratings by critics, and trust me a lot of people are influenced by what the critics got to say, larger franchises are heavily dependent on this. You can run newspaper ads where these posters and other images of the movie are printed in the ads section solely dedicated to movies.
Or even better you can use billboards or hoardings featuring images of the movie, often at places where people can notice it easily. Here’s a very creative billboard of the British show Dracula. I mean how can anyone not pay attention to something like that?
Merchandise
Collectables like action figures, a common practice in Hollywood, for movies from huge franchises like Marvel, DC, Star Wars etc. Or T-shirts and other wearables, sold either at film premiers or on e-commerce websites, have been done in India for movies like Baahubali and are quite popular now. Go to any comic book movie on the first day and you can see the fans wearing t-shirts or hoodies of that superhero, flexing and taking selfies, this fun culture is followed all over the world among the geeks.
Apart from these, other goodies like special edition mobiles, coffee mugs or keychains are also sold as a part of marketing.
Coming to the conclusion, no matter how great your movie is, if the marketing is not good then it’s of no use, maybe it’ll gain a cult following after a decade, but you want it to be recognised when it’s released, right? What do you think? leave a comment below.
Also, check out this article on surveillance in precrime society(Minority Report) on my website.
