Marketing is important to film because it's part of what makes a film successful. The purpose of film marketing is basically to get viewers interested in the film before and after it comes out. To do this a films marketing team use the media to get people interested. Movie trailers are a perfect example of marketing of a film. A trailer’s job is basically there to get an audience interested in a film enough to make them want to go see the movie. A films marketing team also grabs an audience attention by releasing various amounts of merchandise such as, clothes, toys, accessories, etc. Also synergizing with different company’s is also very important to film marketing, because working with a greater company to promote a movie is a great strategy.
Releasing Movie trailers is an important marketing strategy to a film. Trailers make an audience excited about a movie beforehand. Even If people are not typically fans of the certain genre that the movie is, the action-packed movie trailer can change that. When the audience is hyped enough about the movie, they’ll want to tune in to watch it when it releases globally. This would generate a large amount of money. The movie Black Panther premiered in commercial theaters on February 16, 2018. That same month when it globally released it made over 360 million dollars in the first week alone, and over 1.3 billion dollars today. Without the trailer who knows how much money it would’ve made. Also, sometimes a movie trailer is released close to or exactly before the movie comes out. The long gap between the trailer and the movie release is a good strategy, because it makes the audience members more anticipated to watch the movie. This allows enough time for many people to get interested in the film, leading to a lot more money. For example, the teaser trailer released by Walt Disney Studios for the movie Beauty and the Beast released on May 23, 2016. This is almost 10 months before the movie released globally, which was on March 17, 2017. This was worth it because the film made over 1.2 billion dollars worldwide. This further shows the importance of movie trailers to films, without movie trailers, getting the audience to be interested in a film would’ve been a real challenge. This most likely would negatively affect the amount of money that most films made, meaning that the amount would probably decrease.
Furthermore, Merchandise is also an important marketing strategy to a film. I’d imagine that producers of a film would rely heavily on the merchandise sales of the film. For example, in addition to the movie trailer of a film releasing, the marketing team of a certain film would sell merchandise in various ways. The introducing of new merch in stores can create excitement to a film. People could go to stores like Walmart and Target to get clothes, toys and accessories of the movie that they want. Doing this is cross promoting which is also great strategy. However, if people don’t want to get the merchandise physically, they can shop online on sites like Amazon, AliExpress and more. It's both beneficial to the place or site that the merchandise is being purchased and the movie itself. This is because the merchandise that’s in stores or online can increase business in that place. And for the movie, the merchandise bought for that specific movie, can get the consumer interested in the movie enough based on how the merchandise looks, even if they do not know what the movie is about. So, it’s a win win situation for both sides in the long term. For example, when the movie The Lego movie released, it grossed over 468.1million dollars worldwide. Many people who helped generate that number could most likely be those who got interested and purchased the merchandise that was introduced for the movie. Considering Lego is a popular toy company, this is highly likely. The Lego movie also help boost the Lego company toy profits. According to the article Movie credited with increase in Lego sales and Profits”, (published by Irish examiner) “the Danish toymaker saw profits lift 15% to 7 billion Danish krone last year. Sales rose by 13% to 28.6 billion Danish krone”. This shows how selling merchandise of a film is a great marketing strategy, because it helps add to the profits of a film.
Synergizing and cross promoting with other companies is also an important marketing strategy to a film. It is important, because adding little pictures and toys in everyday objects and foods that people enjoy every day, can boost profits. This can help both companies involved operate more efficiently. A very common form of this is McDonalds and Disney working together. For example, when a Disney movie is in theaters, Disney partner up with Mcdonalds to add one of the movie character’s toys in a happy meal. This is most likely because McDonalds is a very popular fast food restaurant with millions sold every day. Disney knows this so they partner up with them to increase the movie profits when the movie releases globally. Other examples of this includes the cinnamon toast crunch company partnering up with Disney, by having little pictures on the cover of the cereal box, and toys on the inside of cereal box. And another example includes Universal and cold stone ice cream partnering to introduce new flavors of ice cream inspired by the movie Ugly dolls. This strategy is effective and works, because when I go to Walmart for groceries, I always get Honey Nut Cheerios. On the cereal box, I saw a picture of a few of the characters from the movie Trolls: World Tour, I noticed it and I wanted to go watch it. So, when it came out, I couldn’t have watched it at the movie theaters due to the current situation, But I did watch it on show box. Therefore, synergy and cross promotion is important to a film, the more productive the companies are the increase in profit it’ll be.
In conclusion, Marketing is important to a film because it helps keep the audience of a certain film interested in it for as long as possible. This is made possible by the release of movie trailers and merchandise. The movie trailer is important in attracting an audience to a film before it releases, and merchandise is important in attracting customers to purchase the product of the film. The synergizing and cross promoting of a film are important because they help to increase the overall profits of the film. In fact, all the marketing strategies of films help to increase the profit of a film, that Is why all of them are just as important as the other.
