Movie Marketing Strategy Research

The theatrical trailer is often the first chance to promote a movie to its target audience. Starting up to a year before the release of a major studio movie, distributors run movie trailers that are meticulously edited and audience-tested. The idea is to give moviegoers a taste of the laughs,special effects and plot twists of the studio's upcoming releases, while leaving them wanting more. It's an art form that's usually handled by special trailer production houses.

About the same time that the first trailers hit the theaters, the movie studio will unveil an official Web site for the film. Typical movie Web sites allow visitors to view multiple versions of the trailer, watch behind-the-scenes interviews and mini-documentaries, read plot synopses, download cell-phone ringtones and desktop wallpaper, play games, chat in forums and even pre-order tickets. The official movie Web site is only the beginning of a much larger Internet marketing campaign.

As the release date of the film draws closer, movie marketers try to get early favorable press coverage in newspapers, magazines and on entertainment TV shows. The main movie publicity tactic is something called a press junket. At a press junket, journalists, entertainment reporters and movie critics are flown out to a special location for a day or weekend of interviews with the stars and creators of the film. The actors,directors and screenwriters sit in separate rooms and the reporters are brought in one by one to ask their questions.

Press junkets are highly controlled environments where interviews are often attended by a publicist, who make sure interviews never veer from positive topics [source: Rosenbaum]. If you've ever seen a TV interview with an actor sitting in front of a poster of their movie, that's from a press junket.

Weeks before the movie opens nationwide, the promotions department starts an all-out publicity blitz. The idea is to bombard the public with so many images and promos for the movie that it becomes a "can't miss" event. Movie marketers will plaster the sides of buses with huge ads, place billboards all around the city, run tons of teaser trailers on TV, place full-page ads in major newspapers and magazines, and the movie's stars will show up on all of the major talk shows.

The Internet is proving to be a prime spot for these publicity blitzes. Promoters can place rich, interactive ads on the Web sites most trafficked by their target audience. They can also release behind-the-scenes clips, bloopers and other viral videos on video-sharing sites like YouTube. Or they can release different media clips and let the fans create their own trailers.

Another popular strategy is to use highly visible product tie-ins and corporate partnerships. In the weeks leading up to the release of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," images of the green Grinch appeared on packages of Oreos, boxes of Froot Loops and cans of Sprite. Even the United States Postal Service got into the act, stamping letters with special "Happy Who-lidays!" messages [source: Finnigan]. For marketing children's movies, the Holy Grail is getting  promotional goodies in McDonald's Happy Meals.

One final movie marketing strategy is the publicity stunt, an orchestrated media event where someone does something incredibly silly, dangerous or spectacular to draw further attention to the opening of the movie. An example is when the promoters of "The Simpsons Movie" transformed dozens of nationwide 7-Eleven convenience stores into replica's of Springfield's own Kwik-E Mart [source: Keegan].

Problems Associated with Movie Marketing

The trickiest part of movie marketing is that every movie is different. Every film is its own standalone product with its own potential market segment. Just because your last kid's movie was a huge hit doesn't mean that audiences will come in droves to the next one. There's no formula for success, so marketers must be creative to grab the public's attention.

Moviemaking is an inherently risky business. Movie marketers try to alleviate some of that risk by heavily promoting expensive films. Unfortunately, in the process, they make the films even more expensive by adding on a huge marketing budget. There's always a chance that the marketing campaign will stink just as bad as the movie, and suddenly the studio has thrown away twice the amount of money. For example, Oliver Stone's epic "Alexander" cost $155 million to make and $60 million to market domestically and only took in $167 million worldwide [sources: Box Office Mojo and Waxman].

The problem is that most big-budget movies are marketed to the widest audience possible. Ads are placed on every TV network and stuck in every newspaper and magazine. There's no focus. Chances are that with every blockbuster movie marketing campaign, millions of dollars are lost on people who would never see the movie, no matter how good it is.

One solution is the idea of the nichebuster, a smaller movie marketed heavily to a highly specific audience segment, say skateboarding fans or religious groups [source: Schonfeld]. One of the proponents of this idea is 20th Century Fox, which recently launched a division called FoxFaith that will produce and market movies to a Christian, family-oriented audience. This is called demographic marketing rather than selling movies according to traditional genres like action, romantic comedy, thriller, et cetera [source:Movie Marketing Update].

A final problem is that moviegoers are more media savvy than ever. While children are highly susceptible to advertising, many adults recognize the publicity blitz for what it is: publicity. Some moviegoers are starting to complain about the sheer magnitude of hype that surrounds major studio releases.

This is another reason why the Internet is proving to be a powerful marketing tool. If studios play their cards right, they can capitalize on social networks, viral video sites and other online communities to sell their movies for them. The Net Generation moviegoer is much more likely to trust his chat buddy's opinion than some talking head on E! Entertainment Television.

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