Monday 8 December 2014

Marketing Essay

A film's success is largely bound to the marketing and distribution to the target audience. For many companies, they need large advertising and distribution methods in order to attract attention to their films. One company that is renowned for their excellent distribution and advertising is 20th century fox; due to this they influence and control a large majority of the film industry. They are able to distribute their films and products worldwide effectively, resulting in their products getting publicity from all ages and audiences. This immediately gives them an advantage over films and companies who can not advertise their products as effectively. Being a large and well established company 20th Century Fox has many connections to television companies, print companies and other business's that they can collaborate with. One example of a convergence project that 20th century fox did was a line of McDonalds Happy Meal toys in order to advertise their animated film 'Ice Age'. This allowed their target audience of young children to be exposed to the film before it was released. This made the film a global amount of $879,765,137 worldwide. The film was also released shortly after on DVD all over the world which gave it extra publicity and sales even after it had finished screening at the cinema. Other films that were affected positively by convergence were the 'Planet of the Apes' franchise. They featured on many TV adverts and made many feature-ette length films which they published on Youtube. These films where then published in the popular magazine Vice. This got the films out to an exclusive audience that only Vice could reach out to. These people are the people that buy and wear high fashion clothing and are also interested in street culture, therefore meaning that they are more likely to spend more money. Planet of the Apes also did a collaboration with the high class street wear brand 'A Bathing Ape' which attracts this audience again.

One film that did poor due to bad marketing, advertising and distribution was the film 'Dredd'. This film was produced by the entertainment distributors Lionsgate Productions. Because of their tight budget of $45 million, their advertising campaign was significantly smaller scaled compared to larger budgeted films like 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' (Which I will come to later). Their distribution was the area which let them down greatest as they only sent the film to most cinemas in 3D rather than 2D. The only places that showed the film in 2D were the larger cinemas which most people would not be able to easily access. This was a poor choice made by the distribution company as instead of travelling the longer distances and paying more money they just chose not to watch the film resulting in them making a very small amount of money. Another poor move from the distribution company was releasing the film on the same year as 'Raid' which has a very similar storyline to 'Dredd's' so people who had seen 'Raid' didn't want to watch 'Dredd'. This once again supports the statement that marketing and distribution plays a huge part in a film's success.


On the contrary, a film that did very well due to it's balance of marketing, distribution and advertising was 'The Grand Budapest Hotel'. One major factor in the films success was the sale of rare and collectible items sold on eBay which relate to the film such as fake moustaches and suitcases were auctioned. 20th century Fox also collaborated with Prada in order to attract a higher class market to watch their film. This benefited both the film (and the companies which helped to create it) as well as the cinema's which showed it. This is because the richer audience would go and watch the film and obviously spend more money than an average viewer, which would make the cinema more money. This meant that the cinema would want more copies of the film to screen which then results in the film production and distribution companies making money as well. A large scale model of the grand hotel was toured around many larger cinemas in the UK which also attracted more people to watch the film. As a result of all of these marketing and advertising strategies the film made the grand total of $172 million profit at the box office from a budget even smaller than 'Dredd's' which only made a measly $41 million. 


After researching, I do agree strongly with the statement as even films with a 'large' budget can fail if they are not advertised and distributed effectively, as shown by the evidence above.






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