Movie marketing or movie promotion is one of the most important and costly aspects of film release. Every major Hollywood studio or movie distribution company has an internal department devoted to promotion, This department is responsible for devising an effective, cohesive advertising campaign generally spread across several different media platforms this can include movie trailers, posters, newspapers, tv commercials, radio and digital media.
One of the main things to note when looking at advertising campaigns for film is that the film business is cyclical and seasonal by its own nature. The bulk of films cluster to be released during the summer months as well as bank holiday weekends and the Christmas seasons. Taking this into consideration it would make sense that when so many other high profile films are being released around your own you will need something to stand out among the rest. This is why you need an effective advertising campaign.
In recent years the general consensus for film advertising is a "go big" philosophy. For blockbuster release films the advertising campaign can cost up to as much as half the production fee. So if a film costs $80 million to make the distributor may spend $40 million on advertising on promotion. In 2007 the average marketing budget for a high profile film was $35.9 million.
The film that i've chosen to look at for its marketing campaign is Judd Apatow's Pineapple Express starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. The films demographic is fairly obvious as soon as you see the posters (above) immediately you get an idea of what the audience will be. You can see straight away from Seth Rogens face exactly what the general premise of the film is going to be, he is quite clearly intoxicated. The poster itself its quite minimalist in the sense that its simply the actor, his name, the title, the release date and a previous movie they made. There is quite a thick fog of smoke in the background, which is quite clearly giving a little more away about the premise of the film and the story line that will likely follow.
Exactly the same idea's are used for the second poster they released for the movie. Its exactly the same in every way apart from obviously the image and the name. The effect of the image is slightly different though. In Seth Rogens poster he looks very relaxed and somber. Compared to James Franco who looks ecstatic. I think the reason for this is to show the two more common side effects of marijuana use. One is mellow and chilled and the other is laughing heavily and generally having a good time. What ever you can say about these posters you cant say they don't look happy. Even Seth Rogen (the obviously more docile one) has a wry grin.
Here we have a billboard advertisement in Los Angeles, it has both the posters incorporated in to one. This billboard has a completely different feel to it in comparison to the posters. It only reveals the tops of the two actors heads. This, i think, is done in order to not quite reveal both the characters or any of the potential plot line.
To the left we have a website game for the film, i personally don't see the point of this as a method of advertising. It seems a little bit of a waste of time and finance. To access the game you have to go on to the website which would indicate that you already know something about the film. The only positive i can think of would be to increase the amount of time the person spends on the website would increase with a game on there. Or perhaps they are more likely to recommend the game to a friend thus sending them to the website and so on. But as a straight marketing campaign i dont see it as hugely useful.
In conclusion this was, largely speaking, a all around generic advertising campaign. They didn't really do anything out of the ordinary or ground breaking. I think that the fact they used actors and a director that have a fairly set genre across all the films they do. This is certainly true of Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow. So the fact that these people are so heavily involved in the film means that the fan base will largely know what lines the film will be roughly following.
For people who are new to the film the genre and the people involved i think the advertising campaign works well in its simplicity. It doesn't reveal alot about the film and does rub the still illegal contents in the faces of everyday folk. I think that this was done well. It doesn't make a big song about a key factor in the film that i believe would alienate potential viewers.
