Media gets marketed every day on multiple platforms. A business will spend thousands of dollars in marketing. Marketing is essential in the media industry because people pay attention to eye-catching promotions.
Walt Disney is known for its heavy promotion. Adults and kids were Disney’s target audience for Black Panther. To get kids and Marvel fans interested in the movie, they promoted a game called Marvel Contest Champion and created an event for it where one of the actors participated in it. Disney used synergy because Marvel fans were already playing the game and would be more inclined to watch the movie if there was a game version of Black Panther.
Another Disney movie with great promotion is Beauty and the Beast. This live-action movie needed a lot of marketing. People could watch the original instead of paying to see the live-action in theatres, so Disney had to get them interested. Instead of synergizing, they spent most of their marketing budget in cross-promotion. The Bachelor had a special edition Beauty and the Beast theme episode where the live-action casts, Luke Evans and Josh Gad, hosted it. Fans of The Bachelor would be spending their money more on the movie because of this episode. Getting to know the actors, even for a small amount of time, has audiences wanting to see films.
Marketing, however, can cause a company to lose a lot of money. A movie studio called STX Entertainment spent between $45 million and $50 million on their promotions. The movie did not do well, so STX lost more money than they earned. They tried to promote this movie heavily, but the time it came out was not the best. It came right after Endgame, and Detective Pokemon premiered five days after. Young audiences gravitated to those two movies because they are part of big franchises. STX targeted the right audience at the wrong time, so their gross income was low. Movie studios and production companies need to know the best time to target viewers, or their movies will suffer huge losses because another movie promoted at the right time.
Marketing is a crucial part of films. A movie will flop if it gets targeted incorrectly and receives the wrong push. Marketing can determine how much money a movie can make for the initial premiere and opening week.
