Methods of Promotion

There are many different methods of promotion which institutions use to make people watch their films. If institutions didn't promote their releases months in advance then nobody would know when a film is released and there would be no hype around it.

The level of promotion depends on the budget and how large the production is. For example, film companies who would have the bigger budgets and therefore bigger promotional campaigns would be the Hollywood Big 6 such as Paramount, Walt Disney and Universal. These companies will have the money to promote on a much wider 'tent-pole' audience scale which differs from smaller institutions such as Warp who may only have the budget to promote the film locally.

Viral marketing

Producers and distributors are using viral marketing more and more due to the amount of people who know use the internet and have social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Viral marketing is when distributors promote films through social networks on which users usually share and retweet information about these films on to other people's feeds and the process continues until thousands of people have heard about the film that they are releasing and is why it is considered as the n
ew word of mouth. This creates hype around the films release as the snippets of information that the distributors are releasing on to these social networking sites are intriguing to the audience and makes them want to find out more. It also is a very cheap way of getting promotion for a film and smaller institutions such as Microwave can easily and cheaply create as much hype online to thousands of potential viewers as they would to spend thousands of pounds on large heritage methods such as billboards, magazine ads, cinema trailers etc. globally.

An example of a successful viral marketing campaign is The Dark Knight Rises (2012). The distributors of the film decided to promote the film by posting an encrypted audio file on to the films website which was described by fans as chanting. The fans then decrypted the audio to the Twitter hashtag, '#TheFireRises'. Warner Bros. removed a pixel from the webpage for every tweet using the hashtag. The website then revealed an image of Bane. This created hype around the film as fans had to find out information themselves.

Traditional heritage methods
Heritage marketing is the more traditional and old fashioned way of promoting films. These don't include the internet and most other digital methods that we usually see these days. Some examples of heritage methods include billboards, posters, newspaper/magazine ads, cinema trailers etc. An example of a film which has used heritage marketing is Maleficent (2014). Maleficent was distributed by Walt Disney pictures and therefore is a large budget film as Walt Disney is a part of the Big 6. The billboard pictured in the photo on the right would be one of many put up across the world to gain hype around the films release. This would cost a lot of money and therefore only one of the Big 6 and other large budget film industries would be able to accomplish this successfully. Like other traditional promotional methods, the poster/billboard features the main character and the main actress which will gain some insight into the films narrative as well as attract fans of Angelina Jolie to watch the film. The billboard also shows the films title, distributor and release date. Billboards would typically be released just before the films release unlike viral marketing which would normally be done a few months beforehand to reveal information in snippets which intrigues the fans, whereas billboards (and other heritage methods) would reveal a lot more about the film.

Digital marketing
Digital marketing is when the promotion of a film is entirely based on technology based platforms such as computers, phones, tablets etc. These include the internet, apps and e-mails which are integrated within these platforms.

An example of digital marketing is having adverts for the films feature on popular websites such as Facebook. The picture on the right shows an advert for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 (2011) featured on the Yahoo! website.

Another example is having the film be available to like or follow on social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter on which fans who are eager to find out information about the film can follow the page and get updates on its release. This also links with viral marketing as liking the page and retweeting and liking the pages posts will then send the posts on to the fan's friends pages and so on until many people have seen the page and its posts. Below is an example of a film which has it's own Facebook page. This is easier for low budget film industries to do as it is very cheap to create hype around their films on social networking sites.

For my final film, I intend to use heritage marketing methods to promote my film as I will be creating my own trailer, film poster and magazine cover. My research into some posters and billboards will help me integrate the conventions of them into my own film poster.