Promotion

The whole point of a film trailer is to market/promote a film so that the target audience get excited and this creates a buzz about the film before it's released.  For my promotional campaign I am not only creating a viral trailer, but also a film poster and magazine article. I'm using a mixture of heritage and viral marketing to promote my film. Things like posters and magazine articles are forms of heritage marketing and have proved successful in promoting films for years. Online campaigns like trailers and social media are forms of viral marketing, these emerged when the internet was created and film companies found that it was a cheap way to reach a wide audience.

Viral marketing is good because:

• It is cheap
• It's very convenient as people can access the internet from many different places and when they are on the go.
• It allows exposure to a large audience and can be used to draw in a wider/global target audience because people subscribe and share things and then this spreads information at a fast rate. 
• Viral marketing can often take very interesting and unique forms such as fake web pages and news reports. If campaigns are seen to be different to normal campaigns then they are more likely to be remembered by the audience which is good as the audience will be anticipating the films release. 

Heritage marketing is good because:

• It grabs peoples attention when they are out and about. For example billboards will catch people's eye when they are driving and then they will be more likely to remember about the film and potentially want to watch it.
• Heritage marketing forms are conventional and have proven to be successful promotional methods as they have been around for years and years. 
• Some, particularly more of the older generation, may not have access to the internet or may prefer not to use it and therefore they are more likely to come across these heritage campaigns so these will have more of an affect on them. 

A mixture of push and pull marketing is often used in order to promote a film. Push marketing is where the institution/producer targets the audience directly with their campaign e.g. a film trailer that is shown during an advert break on TV. Pull marketing is where the audience actually seek out information about a film or actively promote/produce it themselves, for example going on to Facebook and searching for and sharing a link to a film's page. Pull marketing has become more common with the development of Web 2.0 and allowed the concept of prosumers to appear. Prosumer is a term meaning a mixture of a consumer and a producer. More of a film's target audience are becoming prosumers meaning that they not only consume the film but they produce their own things relating to the film as well. For example there has been an increase in the number of fan films created by the target audience and some of these are successful/professional enough to be recognised and win awards at film competitions. 

One example of how viral marketing was successful in creating hype about a film was the 2012 viral campaign for the Dark Knight Rises. Warner Bros organised the spreading of 300 pieces of graffiti relating to this film around the world, they then posted on the film's website the locations of this graffiti and encouraged the fans to upload images of this graffiti to the site. Each image unlocked another screen of the trailer, the full trailer was unlocked within minutes and the fans were overwhelmed with anticipation about the film's release. Fake police reports/posters and webpages were also created so that news about the film was everywhere and more and more of the audience heard about it. A virtual reality game set in Gotham city was released that the audience could play, this made the audience feel like they were actually part of the film which created a buzz among fans. By the time the film came out the fans were going crazy and huge numbers of people went to see it at the cinema, giving Warner Bros a huge profit. This campaign proved successful as it was different and encouraged audience interaction which therefore made the audience feel like they played a part in the film's release. 

Cloverfield is another example of a film that had a very successful viral marketing campaign. A number of fake news reports/videos were released with pretend sightings of the creature and of this creature destroying buildings. The clips were realistic and many who saw them online got scared and researched into the film more. This campaign was successful in creating a buzz about the film as the audience got excited after seeing these news clips. These clips were so effective that they were included on the Cloverfield DVD as extended footage. 

Here is an example of one of the many posters created for the Dark Knight Rises. The poster includes a well known character who is associated with the film so as soon as the audience see it they will know what the film is and this will excite them and make them want to read on further. Also the paper is titled "Gotham Observer". Fans will recognise the name Gotham and be immediately draw to reading this fake article and hopefully sharing it online so therefore the article spreads and reaches a wider audience.