Chapter 33 - Teen Choice - Promotion Strategies & Avengers Case Study - Uni 3rd Year 2017/18
Updated: Jun 22, 2020
‘Promotion may have a number of purposes depending on the needs of an organisation. For example, it can raise awareness of a brand or business, highlight the benefits or value of its products to attract sales or help to change the image of a firm. Promotion covers a variety of techniques by which an organisation communicates with its customers and potential customers. These communications may have different forms and content to ensure that the target audience can understand and receive the messages properly.
AIDA The AIDA model demonstrates the stages of promotion: Initiating awareness (attention) amongst non-customers or increasing knowledge of new offers for existing customers Generating interest for and creating desire to have the product Finally ensuring action to purchase. The ultimate aim is to keep customers loyal so that over time they become ‘advocates’ and promote the product to other consumers. Customer recommendation is a very strong form of promotion.’ http://businesscasestudies.co.uk/national-trust/the-use-of-social-media-in-promotion/the-purpose-of-promotion.html To put this AIDA model in an example to help break it down simpler, I'll discuss it in a film context. Applying these ideas about promotion and social media to film, posting trailers and promotion posters on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram is creating 'awareness' to the world of the film, as well as attending venues like comic-con where you can announce the film titles and discuss initial themes of the film for early stages of creating 'awareness'. The build up of 'interest' and 'desire' are achieved with repeated and new posts on social media as they act like prompts to remind you about the film. Then the 'action' is actually going to the cinema to watch the film. It is very easy to watch a trailer online now and be interested in the film, but it is another to go out of your way to wait and go to the cinema, and then wait for a DVD release. The posters that I am designing would be used in the Teen Choice 2018 promotion strategy to help increase awareness of the event and the nominees, the 'action' would be buying tickets to go and see the event live, or even just watching the show on TV live. Another form of 'action' would be to buy the promotion posters to keep in your room to remember the event or to have a nice poster of your favourite actor/actress out of character. ‘From self-funded independent projects to big-name Hollywood blockbusters, the movie industry has embraced social media. Big time. Historically, of course, this makes a lot of sense. Classical Hollywood had the star system and fan magazines. Modern Hollywood has Facebook, Twitter and mobile phones. From creating viral alternate reality campaigns to using social networks to build awareness, the movie industry is busy leveraging social media to connect with fans and promote its products.’ Going Viral One of my favorite marketing trends of the past decade has been the rise of viral alternate reality campaigns, especially at the movies. Thanks to social media, elements of these campaigns can get really intricate and really involved. For Inception, Warner Bros. did a lot of viral marketing — including working with the location-based service SCVNGR to promote the film. For Toy Story 3, Disney and Pixar went all out, creating vintage toy commercials for Lots-o'Huggin' Bear, one of the new characters in the film. Trailers & Promotion Posters It used to be that you had to go to the theater to see the trailers for the next batch of upcoming films. Then TV shows dedicated to showcasing previews hit the scene. While watching movie previews online has been old-hat for more than a decade, the rise of social media has changed how information gets exposed to fans. Sure, movie studios still send out press releases and have special websites that news sites and blogs can access to get the latest scoop, but more and more studios are taking to Facebook and Twitter to debut their latest trailers. Again, Disney gets props in this department. The studio used Facebook to debut its first character posters from Alice in Wonderland and has also used Facebook to show off movie trailers. The Future We expect to see the movie industry embrace social media even more in the future. A look at some of the biggest hits at the box office this year proves that many of the most successful films also had strong social media campaigns.'
One example of a movie being promoted successfully on social media at the time of creating this Teen Choice project was ‘Avengers Infinity War’.
Here are some screenshots of Marvel Studios' Instagram account. They used many different promotional techniques within their Instagram feed to promote the movie during its 'interest/desire' period before the film was released. Working from the bottom up, you can see the actors with action figures of their characters, so that is promoting the toy release as well as the film. Next is a promotion poster, then a 50 day countdown video, this is a teaser trailer and a reminder to fans that the film will be released worldwide in 50 days. Next is a series of magazine covers, so the promotion is branching out beyond the internet and is now in a magazine form, most likely with interviews with actors in it. Next is a promotion video to get people hyped for the new trailer to be released the following day. Then there is the new trailer which is longer and has a lot more to pick up on about the film, then a promotion poster reveal, then more magazine covers. By keeping quite prolific and posting regularly keeps people on a hype about the film, using social media like this almost helps to give fans just a little poke during their day to remind them about the film. One strategy that I found inspiring for this project was the way that they revealed the new promotion poster.
The poster reveal is essentially just zooming out from the center of Iron Man’s chest, but there are subtle elements within it to make the reveal special. The glow from Iron Man’s chest dulls down slowly to reveal what you see in the final poster. There is also some subtle other animation techniques used, like some sparks of electricity coming from Black Widow’s new cane weapon for example, that is something you do not get in the flat poster, but with an animation reveal and that level of attention to detail, you can bring a poster to life a lot more. The way that the reveal works from the center outwards, also helps put focus on the main characters and ones who are potentially most at risk of dying during this film. Fans know that this film and the next Avengers film is the last one in some of the actors contracts, but most commonly know for the 3 actors in the middle, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor. Putting the important characters in the middle helps to add hype and speculation for fans as to who is going to die or face a life changing moment in this film.
In terms of what I can take from this for my project however, is that I could consider creating subtle animation within my reveal with layers, as that can go a long way. Perhaps I could create a zoom out like with this poster, a fade, or subtly bring parts of the painting to life, like making an earring or necklace shimmer in the light for example, much like with the glow of Iron Man’ chest.
I could perhaps post my work on social media in a way that Teen Choice perhaps would to build hype for the event, by posting poster animation reveals and then the poster design itself.
Looking back at this research now, I can see how this AIDA model still applies to my own work. It could be said that when I post work on instagram, that is me creating 'awareness' of my work, the 'interest' is met by people who follow, like my my work and comment, 'desire' is the few who actually get in touch about prices for prints or getting a custom original portrait painting, then the 'action' is when someone buys a print on etsy or commissions me to paint a portrait or piece of artwork for them. So according to this theory, if I expose my work to more people, then I should statistically have a wider range of people seeing my work and therefore more people more likely to follow through to the stage of 'action'. Making more accounts on social media apps like Pinterest, posting more frequently on facebook, joining facebook page communities, these are all things I can do as a start to get my work out to even more people than currently.