Trent Jacklich
Audience and Institution Essay
1. Assess
the importance of marketing in the media area you studied.
The
Concept of marketing has been around much longer than the first commercially
sold movie was made available to the masses. Before people reserved movie
tickets in an online application with credit cards, film distribution can be
first traced back to 1894, where the Holland brothers made a business by
selling kinetoscopes and their short loops of film. Only the rich and
businesses could afford to own these large floor bound boxes, but the first
kinetoscope storefront that opened up in Manhattan amazed the public with this
new innovation. However, while these first “movies” could be sold on the wonder
alone, the present market is much more saturated and distributor companies do
much more to make people see want to see their movie. Without marketing, people
would not even know movies such as Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Black
Panther, and Ugly Dolls.
Guardians
of the Galaxy Vol.2 was the highly anticipated sequel to its predecessor,
Guardians of the Galaxy. As a sequel to an already extremely high grossing
movie, Vol. 2 was set up for success, however, this did not stop Disney from
using cross platform promotion to advertise the film. Disney put in place many
cross promotions, such as main characters on bags of Doritos, Action figures,
and even Lego sets. A total of 15 companies were signed on a Disney
advertisement campaign a large number even for 2017, the release date of Vol.2
. Even though the film had a large possible returning audience, Disney had a
particularly vigorous marketing strategy, which lead to Vol. 2 having an
international total box office outing of $863 million according to Variety,
around $100 million more than its predecessor. This success shows the
importance of marketing as Disney had much stronger and prominent advertisement
with much stronger financial turnouts. I even remember looking down at some
coke I was drinking and seeing the main characters face staring right back at
me!
Black
Panther released to theaters in 2018. While black panther did not have nearly
as much physical promotions (although it still retained toys and collectables)
Disney decided to promote Black Panther in a much less physical way: Music and
events. Popular singer-songwriter Kendrick Lamar preformed a Song from the
movie’s soundtrack at the College Football Playoff National Championship Game,
this event was televised, showing this relatively niche superhero from the
avengers comics series to a whole new audience. Even after the movie was
released, the mixtape of soundtrack that was made available a month before the
DVD release came to critical acclaim. This wide appeal could not and did not
rely on past viewers of a predecessor movie; instead opting for a much wider
appeal. This much wider appeal allowed black panther to transform from a once
relatively niche superhero from the ever-dwindling medium of comic books to a
household name.
On
the opposite side of the spectrum of success the movie UglyDolls made less
money than it cost to produce. UglyDolls, by comparison to the two previous
movies discussed, had much less marketing and much less outreach. For one,
UglyDolls had a horrible release time fighting with the always exciting new
Avengers title (the finale no less!) and Detective Pikachu, both box-office
hits. However, that factor is not the only or even the most contributing factor
to UglyDolls Demise. A lack of major marketing without main children appeals
such as toys or clothing made UglyDolls not stand out to its competition. The
farthest Alibaba (The distributor) goes in reaching out to children Is An ice
cream flavor at Coldstone creamery with exciting toppings and other food
related Cross-promotions, strangely. While the cast is nothing short of star
studded, with singers such as Kelly Clarkson and Blake Shelton, even this could
not save the destined flop, as fans of these artist are above the age group
that UglyDolls is obviously trying to appeal to. Without the Backbone of strong
marketing and with an unsavory release time, UglyDolls was doomed from the
start. Personally, I remember seeing the children’s menu at my local burger
place and wondering what those multicolored blobs were. After looking it up, I
realized that the movie had already flopped!
Marketing
is such a prominent part of any product a company could sell. Without
marketing, these movies could be the best piece of cinema that had ever
existed, and no one would ever see them. But alas, a distributor must take care
in its marketing strategy, as a horrible market strategy can make a once
promising movie flop. Marketing will, and most likely always will be important
to the general populaces enjoyment of cinema.
