Marketing

Marketing Campaigns for Documentaries/Films

For part of my finished portfolio, I have to produce a poster, film magazine front cover and/or a webpage. Before I look closer into what I would like to produce, I am going to research into different ways to market a documentary to see how important they are as marketing campaigns and how they draw in their audiences. I will look particularly into how the film companies encase language, audience, institution and representation into these products and who produces them.

What is a marketing campaign firstly?

The efforts of a company or a third-party marketing company to increase awareness for a particular product or service, or to increase consumer awareness of a business organization. A marketing campaign has a limited duration.
The marketing campaign plays a vital role in informing potential audiences about a film with the purpose of encouraging people to see the from at the cinema. The companies who own the film and loan it to cinemas to show for a period of time are called distributors. 
Distributors are keen for their films to be successful possible so they create a marketing campaign to raise awareness of the film and arouse interest.

Three Different Ways to Market a Film: 

Posters

• Here, I have the poster for the very first Pirates of the Caribbean.  
• It is an action/adventure/fantasy film made in 2003. 
• Looking at the poster, you can straight away identify three very famous actor/esses who are very well-known in the film industry. 
• This is marketing the film as being good because it has these brilliant actors in. 
• Johnny Depp, who is bang straight in the middle, looks directly at the audience, engaging them, making them feel apart of the cast. 
• The actors are shown in different camera angles
• Keira Knightley, who plays Eliszabeth Swann, is portrayed on the poster as lower socially-ranked as the three other men which is what most women would have been like in the era the film is based on. (Although in the film she often chafes at her own restrictions her social rank and gender impose on her)

Film Review Page

• 'New movies in order of merit' first film is POTC telling the audience that it is fantastic and deserves merits
• Title of the film is a subtitle, bold and is the second thing the audience tends to look at after the picture
• A4 picture showing one of the protagonists -  showing an event in the film - makes audience want to know what happens and who the man is
• 'Predicted interest curve' shows interest high
• 'movie of the month' want to see it to see why it deserves that 'award'
• the audience has 'precious little substance to cling to' in a black box to stand out, immediately seen by readers
• 'see this if you liked...' on the right to show readers mutual interests

Webpage 

• Website is interactive
• Games, quizzes, gallery available to do
• Trailer is immediately in the audience's eye view when they log on
• Again, interactive 'Join jack's quest..' Jack being the funny protagonist that the audience relate to
• Links to facebook/youtube/twitter pages to feed off the abundance of social networking interactions about lately
• Shows characters and quick link to where you can buy it
• Gives overview of the film
• Background is an exert from the film - as though you were in the film
• Colour scheme suits the genre

Why is it important for trailers to show us the genre and how is it established?

*VOICE RECORDING***

I have chosen to design a poster and front of a magazine as I think these are two hugely-used ways of marketing documentaries in the 21st century. Before I start to design these, I must look at the practical elements as well as the physical elements used to produce them.