I fully agree with this statement, because marketing is a necessary requirement needed to ensure that the audience knows everything they need to about the film. Without marketing, good production practices are worthless because the audience will not have heard of the film, let alone know when it is coming out to go watch it. This means that the film will make nothing and become a box office flop. The purpose of a marketing campaign is to create a 'hype' amongst the target audience, which will excite them and make them want to watch the film. Marketing campaigns come in a variety of shapes and forms, such as posters, trailers, premieres, social media and merchandise. Hollywood have the advantage when it comes to marketing as most of their production companies can use vertical integration to promote their film. Vertical integration is where a company has a range of different multi media platforms that the company owns, and therefore can promote the film as much as they want e.g. Disney owns a film studio, TV channel and magazine, which means that they can promote it across printed media and on screen.
The two films I studied - The Hangover and The Inbetweeners Movie - had significantly different marketing budgets, with The Hangover having a rather large marketing budget of around $50 million and The Inbetweeners Movie having a much lower budget of roughly £1 million. This gives Hollywood the advantage because they are financially advanced, so they can afford to market their film in a wider, more expensive variety of ways. Both of these films were marketed to their correct audiences, which links in with Halls and Holmes theory (1998): "Any media text is created for a particular audience and will usually appeal most to this particular audience" because both films are appealing the most to their correct target audiences. For The Hangover film, they are mainly focusing on straight, white males aged 18-34, and The Inbetweeners Movie is targeting 15-25 year olds, preferably those who have seen the TV series but this is not a necessary requirement. Their target audience aims at a wider variety of people, both black and white, because of the vast multi-cultured society existing in Britain. Their targeted gender is predominately male because all of the protagonists are male, and females are represented in a fairly sexist, mockingly kind of way. On the other hand, there are 4 main female characters in the film, but they are mocked by the protagonists for being 'chubby' or too 'whiny'.
Both of these films had two trailers (a teaser and an official trailer) with the teaser trailer being released a few months before the official one to create 'hype' amongst the primary audience. The Internet has been proven to be a cheap and easy way to promote films - Social networking sites were also involved for marketing in both films, and The Inbetweeners Movie had Twitter accounts created for the film characters, which collectively reached over 100,000 followers. The Hangover launched a social media campaign across platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, which yielded an estimated 2.5 million impressions over social media. While there is proof that spending millions on marketing is mostly successful, it is interesting when you consider how The Hangover dedicated a much bigger budget to marketing and it wasn't as successful as The Inbetweeners marketing campaign. This is maybe because The Inbetweeners Movie used a wider range of marketing techniques, as it also advertised the film on the side of Pot Noodle packaging. This ensures that those who maybe don't frequent social media or don't have access to it will still see the film advertised either by seeing posters or seeing advertised on Pot Noodles at the supermarket.
In terms of marketing strategies, The Inbetweeners Movie consistently uses the same fonts and colours throughout their promotional products, such as posters and trailers, to present repetition to their audience and make a bigger impression on them. This style repetition will ensure familiarity within the audience, which might lead them to consciously recognise any new/different Inbetweeners film poster without seeing the title first. These posters were distributed amongst bus stops and billboards which ensured that they grabbed the attention of passing pedestrians. The Hangover had a much smaller widespread approach (despite the bigger budget) by only using posters, the internet and trailers as advertisement. Arguably The Hangovers marketing attempt was not as effective as The Inbetweeners marketing campaign because The Inbetweeners Movie already had a massive fan base created from the very popular TV series. This series consisted of 3 seasons containing 3 episodes each and lasted from 2008 to 2010. This gave Hollywood less of an advantage because the majority of British teenagers had watched The Inbetweeners TV show and therefore knew what comedy and characters to expect, whereas nobody had any familiarity with The Hangover film. However, Hollywood had the advantage with money, because they could hire well known actors such as Bradley Cooper and the best director and producer etc. as well as being able to market the film in whatever form they desired.
The marketing budget for both films was similar to the production budget, with the relatively low budget of £4.5 million in total for The Inbetweeners movie being an accurate representation of the British film industry, and how it struggles to compete against the total sum of $85 million Hollywood has funded towards The Hangover Movie. The similarity in marketing budgets for both films also shows evidence for how marketing is just as important as production. The Hangover film made a worldwide gross of over $467 million and became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2009 in the world. The Inbetweeners Movie grossed $88 million at the box office and it retained the number one position in the UK film charts for four weeks before being overtaken by 'Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy' on 20th September 2011. The Inbetweeners Movie was confirmed as having the biggest opening weekend for an independent British film.
Viral marketing (any marketing done via the internet) is a clear example on how the playing field could be levelled for the British film industry. Viral marketing is quick and easy, and it allows anyone to market their films cheaply and successfully. For example, to promote 'Fast and Furious 5' the trailer was uploaded on Vin Diesel's Facebook page and many of his 20 million followers reposted the trailer on other social media platforms, such as YouTube and Twitter. Many other cast members did the same to ensure that the majority of the films target audience somehow saw the trailer. The internet gives upcoming film makers the opportunity to make it big, by showing their film publicly without having to spend millions on marketing via a distribution company. Another example of a film successfully using viral marketing as the main form of promotion is 'The Blair Witch Project', which had an extremely small budget of $20,000 and made over $248 million at the box office. Their marketing campaign was named 'Mischief Marketing' and it was designed to make the audience believe the footage was real and the actors were dead. This fooled a lot of people, especially because the actors were told to stay out of the public eye, thus creating 'hype' amongst the audience. It is interesting to consider that, without the internet, this marketing campaign may not have been possible, therefore making the film less successful by creating less 'hype' amongst fans.
In conclusion, marketing is just as important as production, as various marketing strategies have ensured that the film becomes a financial success. High marketing budgets don't always ensure that the film will be a box office success, as a low marketing budget can be just as successful depending on the marketing strategies used. Viral marketing is an example of this, which gives the Britain a more level playing field to compete with Hollywood. However, Hollywood continues to hold the advantage over the British film industry by having more money to spend on marketing, cast, screen writers, film sets etc.
Viral marketing (any marketing done via the internet) is a clear example on how the playing field could be levelled for the British film industry. Viral marketing is quick and easy, and it allows anyone to market their films cheaply and successfully. For example, to promote 'Fast and Furious 5' the trailer was uploaded on Vin Diesel's Facebook page and many of his 20 million followers reposted the trailer on other social media platforms, such as YouTube and Twitter. Many other cast members did the same to ensure that the majority of the films target audience somehow saw the trailer. The internet gives upcoming film makers the opportunity to make it big, by showing their film publicly without having to spend millions on marketing via a distribution company. Another example of a film successfully using viral marketing as the main form of promotion is 'The Blair Witch Project', which had an extremely small budget of $20,000 and made over $248 million at the box office. Their marketing campaign was named 'Mischief Marketing' and it was designed to make the audience believe the footage was real and the actors were dead. This fooled a lot of people, especially because the actors were told to stay out of the public eye, thus creating 'hype' amongst the audience. It is interesting to consider that, without the internet, this marketing campaign may not have been possible, therefore making the film less successful by creating less 'hype' amongst fans.
In conclusion, marketing is just as important as production, as various marketing strategies have ensured that the film becomes a financial success. High marketing budgets don't always ensure that the film will be a box office success, as a low marketing budget can be just as successful depending on the marketing strategies used. Viral marketing is an example of this, which gives the Britain a more level playing field to compete with Hollywood. However, Hollywood continues to hold the advantage over the British film industry by having more money to spend on marketing, cast, screen writers, film sets etc.
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