A news article from Studio Briefing recently came across the When To Blink desk:
“Sony’s marketing department was receiving kudos today (Monday) for its promotional campaign for District 9, a relatively low-budget sci-fi flick that uses minimal special effects, is set in South Africa, and stars relatively unknown actors. Studio marketers had emphasized that the movie was produced by Peter Jackson of Lord of the Rings fame. They previewed it at the Comic-Con convention in San Diego, where it immediately gave rise to intense online discussion — and quickly “went viral.” On the other hand the marketing campaign for Bandslam (see reviews separately) was slammed by some industry observers. On her Deadline Hollywood Daily blog, Nikki Finke commented that the marketing for the movie “was so young that moviegoers thought it was High School Musical when it was closer to School of Rock.” She published an email message from an unnamed “Bandslam insider,” who wrote that “instead of selling it quirky and cool (a la Juno) they sold it on the Disney channel’s Vanessa Hudgens and Aly Michalka. Instead of selling the concept — band of outcasts like The Commitments — they Disneyfied this movie with glitter paint. … There have been literally dozens and dozens of calls today and emails from heads of marketing at different studios saying this may be singly the worst job they’ve ever seen on a movie whose unique voice deserved to be heard through positioning, title, marketing tie-ins, and knowing your audience.”
For mine, this article drives home a few points of interest:
- Just how badly some marketers can get it wrong (and on the flip side, just how much of an influence they can have when getting it right).
- The power of viral.
- The importance of good marketing to a successful film campaign. We hear about how in times of recession it’s things like marketing and advertising which are the first to face the chop, well, it’s stories like this that reinforce just how vital good marketing can be. The marketing budget for a film is generally only a small fraction of the production costs themselves and yet it can make all the difference in the world, to the point where a cheap sci-fi flick out of SA can out-muscle its overpriced Hollywood competition.
1. Not even the best marketing can fix a bad product though. District 9 is a pretty good movie and is something new and different. The fact that Blandlsam can name 3 other movies it sorta kind of wanted to be like shows it didn’t sorta really know what it wanted to be. For my mind, probably a crappy movie too. (5.7 on IMDB so guessing it indeed is crappy).
Sometimes all you need is a great product and the marketing will sort itself out. But then, a great product is usually because of good marketing (oh hang on… don’t confuse it with advertising… marketing is product development too!)
2. The power of viral is indeed massive, and growing every day. It works both ways too, but I still think hinges on the idea that marketing should be at the beginning of the product dev. cycle, not a tack on at the end. Build a great product, develop a great service, it becomes a lot easier to go viral.
On the flipside, I never knew about High School Musical until the start had some naked photos on the internet. W00t! But not the kind of marketing Disney wanted, but then again, the movies FWIW, is also crap.
3. Here you’re equating spend to quality though. Quality marketing can be achieved with very little money. Sometimes I asked my creatives to halve client budgets and then think outside the normal ideas. What if the client couldn’t afford TV? What if the client couldn’t afford print… but they really needed to get their message out there because it’s such a great product?
This is when creativity blossom, as necessity is the mother of invention, something you’ll never find on an account with fat budgets.
By: Dr.D on September 14, 2009
at 6:16 pm
Interesting points, Ian. Cheers!
By: Gabriel on September 15, 2009
at 5:23 pm