Marketing and PromotionHamish Taylor-Law

1 Year before release• Around a year before a films official release they will release a

short 'teaser' usually around 30 second that reveals quite little about the films plot line

• Films will often do this if they are part of a franchise to get the fans excited

• Will have a general release date i.e. Summer 2014• Often teaser trailers will have a link to an official website on

the end• Usually these websites will simply have an image and a link to

the trailer, but will become more in-depth and offer more as the film gets closer to release

6 Months before release• Full theatrical trailer revealing more about the film and usually

an official release date• Teaser poster or multiple posters released

2 months before release• TV Spot trailers about 30 seconds long• Widespread mass-marketing with trailers being shown before

a number of films in the cinema• Full posters and billboards

Weeks leading up to release• In the weeks leading up to release people involved in the films

primarily actors but also directors will begin to take part in the ‘press junket’ appearing on television programmes

• Product tie ins become more prominent

Alternative marketing techniques

• PR Stunt – The marketing team will sometimes have an controversial or unusual way of getting the press and the publics attention

• For The Blair Witch Project the PR team claimed that the events depicted were 100% real, and that the three main characters were missing and ‘presumed dead’

• This stunt gave them massive publicity and this film was in the Guinness Book Of World Records for "Top Budget:Box Office Ratio“

• The film cost $22,000 to make and made back $240.5 million, a ratio of $1 spent for every $10,931 made.

Case Study – The Dark Knight Rises

Website• The official website launched in May 2011 as simply a black

page and streamed an encrypted audio file described by users as ‘chanting’

• Users decrypted the audio to reveal the Twitter hashtag "#TheFireRises". Warner Bro removed a pixel from the webpage for every tweet using the hashtag. The website revealed the first official image of Bane.

Chanting

Teaser

In July 2011, a teaser trailer leaked online 3 days before its official release before showings of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2. They knew that this would be an extremely popular showing as it was the concluding film in the Harry Potter sequence, and both films are owned by Warner Brothers.

Full Theatrical Trailer

Teaser Poster• Around six months before the films release, a teaser trailer will be released.

This will be fairly simple and not reveal too much about the plot of the film. They instead use iconography that people will recognise such as the bat symbol in the centre image. This poster is so instantly recognisable it doesn’t even have the name of the film on it, usually a must have for film posters. The other two are recognisable to fans of the films, but not to everyone in the same way as the bat sign. Because of this they include a second give away such as the metal bat symbol or the Batman's mask. These ones also include the name of the film.

Graffiti

500 ‘bat-symbol’ signs were graffitied all over the world, and for every one found, photographed and sent to the Dark Knight Rises Website, a new frame of the trailer would be released. All 500 were found within 24 hours.

Evaluation• The marketing campaign for The Dark Knight Rises was

unbelievably successful• After the smash hit of the previous film and its own incredible

marketing campaign, the public eagerly awaited the campaign for Christopher Nolans conclusion to the epic Dark Knight trilogy just as much as they did the film

• Receiving more than 12.5 million views in the first 24 hours after its release, the trailer set the record for most combined downloads from iTunes, beating the previous record held by The Avengers