#13 Marketing

Marketing is essential for a film, to get its name out. It comes in the forms of press tours, merchandise, advertising, interviews, social media, and much more! 

What is marketing?

According to the American Marketing Association, marketing is defined as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large." Marketing is popularly known for products and services, like insurance, makeup, fast food, etc. Although, films and TV shows utilize these same techniques. 

What are types?

Some types of marketing, especially for the films, come in the form of posters, merchandise, social media posts, and most importantly, teaser TRAILERS. Having a trailer gives the audience a sneak peak to the film/show, but also gets your name out there on different platforms. 

The benefit to this technology age, marketing has become so much easier. (Not the easiest, because it takes a while trying to get people interested in your posts…like it takes some specific camera angles…whatever you know what I mean). It is basically free advertising. To meet the LIAR criteria, a filmmaker, or whereas the marketing team, can spread the word to different countries (aka different languages). The industry, or where the film/show is being produced from can also market on their websites, their social media, and get larger advertisement company to create marketing campaigns. For the audience aspect, gaining a large audience [with the right technique] is essential for productions and marketing towards a certain demographic is easy. If your target audience is thriller/horror fans, create a social media post/video surrounding your thriller/horror production that will put it on their “for you page”. (meaning there it is more likely to get likes rather than dislikes…you don’t want that). Lastly, for representation, [i’m trying to hit these marks for the portfolio bear with me], marketing can include representation of different demographics or people that the audience can resonate with. If they see their favorite celebrity or interviews in their hometown about the movie, they are more likely to be interested in the production. 

movie poster for Psycho (1960)

Movie poster for Funny Face (1957) ft. Audrey Hepburn

Official Trailer to Love at First Sight (2023)

I chose these three because I am an old soul, and since I am doing a "rom-com~ish" film intro, it made sense to include these. 

A Prominent Example...

A famous and recent example of this is the Wicked (2024) movie. Everywhere you walked, even your hometown's CVS had Wicked products. There were even filters on Snapchat and –I believe– YouTube Shorts based on the movie. There were ads including Cynthia Erivo's iconic Defying Gravity riff, and constant memes going about the two stars who play Galinda and Elphaba, especially about their close friendship. All around you saw Wicked, whether through memes on social media or in Forever 21 (true story, I literally saw green Louboutin look alike shoes in Forever 21 in the WICKED SECTION), I mean the team who were working on this, went ALL OUT. They did a great job every time I see green and pink, Wicked is all I could think of. Honestly it is what they say: All press, whether positive or negative, is good press. (something like that...)

My Own Marketing!

For my own film intro, I decided to create a couple social media posts and a poster, to show how it’s done (aka an excuse to use Canva).