2. SPIDERMAN HOMECOMING
Release date: 7th July 2017
This date is significant because it is soon after July 4th which is remembrance day in America. It is also an easy date to
remember as it is the 7th day of the 7th month.
Genre: Sci-fi / Fantasy
Budget: $175 million
Box office: $880.2 million
Homecoming made over 5x more profit.
Cast: Tom Holland, Robert Downey Jr, Zendaya, Chris Evans.
This was Tom Holland’s first solo movie as Spiderman after his introduction in Civil War.
Director: Jon Watts
Jon Watts has previously directed Cop Car, Clown and Creative Control.
Age rating: PG-13
Target audience: Marvel / superhero fans, 13+
Institutions involved: Marvel Studios and Columbia Pictures
3. The purpose of a marketing campaign is to inform, raise awareness and change the behaviours of the target audiences. A
campaign is strategically planned using cross-media platforms to promote a film.
Traditional marketing can be used to promote a film. Examples of traditional marketing are posters and trailers. As well as
that, viral marketing can also be used to promote films. Examples of this are social media posts which gain a lot of
attraction due to people sharing/retweeting them. A type of viral marketing is guerrilla marketing which is used to promote
films using publicity stunts. An example of this was for Batman The Dark Knight. There was a nationwide scavenger hunt
which had 49 different locations containing different clues eventually spelling out “The only sensible way to live in this
world is without rules”. One other way to promote films is through the use of alternate reality games. For example, the film
A.I. created an alternate reality game which lasted 12 weeks to promote their film.
4. These 3 posters all advertise Homecoming
using a simplistic style. All 3 posters have
Spiderman clearly visible which will instantly
attract Marvel fans. They all use the same font
on the release date and 2 of them use the same
colour. The information including release date
and the homecoming hashtag are at the
bottom of the posters in each one in a small
font. Finally, each poster contains the city
where the film is set as the background. All this
shows the simplicity of the posters because
they don’t use big fonts with bright colours,
they just use the main character, location and
release date.
There was a red carpet premiere event for Spiderman Homecoming in
Hollywood on June 28th 2017. Stan Lee made an appearance at the
premiere and walked the carpet. He signed autographs for Marvel
fans. Tom Holland who played Spiderman in the film showed at the
premiere. He already had a lot of fans from Captain America: Civil
War. Robert Downey Jr. also made an appearance at the premiere, he
is one of the biggest names in Marvel. The premiere also included a
VR game for guests to play allowing you to shoot webs. In another
activation, attendees were invited to strap on a harness and climb an
LED-lit rock wall. In this, Parker instructs the player to follow the webs
in the climbing game.
5. Three trailers were released
for Spiderman Homecoming
within around 8 months of
the film being released. From
the screenshots on the left
you can see that they all use
the same colour scheme with
a blue background and yellow
text using the same font
which is also seen on the
posters. Each trailer is around
the same time length
between 2 and 3 minutes.
They all repeat the same
characters and city and
contain hashtags such as
#SpiderManMovie and
#SpiderManHomecoming
which is a form of viral
marketing. All of the trailers
include the Marvel studios
logo which is seen on all
posters and social media
pages.
This is a screenshot of the Spiderman Twitter page 1 month before
Homecoming was released. It had over 550K followers which shows a lot of
people who wanted to see the movie before it was released. The
background for the Twitter page is similar to one of the posters that were
released with the 1st trailer. It uses Spiderman in a familiar pose and outfit
with the city behind him. It includes the Avengers HQ which a lot of fans will
recognise. The logo for the Twitter page uses the same colour scheme and
fonts as the trailers and posters and includes the release date in a large font.
6. The @spidermanmovie Instagram account posted a video showing the high
rating Homecoming received on Rotten Tomatoes after the first weekend of
the film being in cinemas which was the highest rated movie in 2017 at the
time of release. This was followed by another short video 5 days after
saying it was the #1 movie in the world, persuading more people to see it
while they still could in cinemas.
A lot of fans loved Tom Holland as
Spiderman and believed he was the
best actor to play Spiderman yet. On
the @spidermanmovie Instagram
account they posted a quote from
Rolling Stone saying Tom Holland is
the best Spiderman ever. This could
convince older Spiderman fans to see
Homecoming. He already had fans
from Civil War but Homecoming was
his first solo film and therefore
gained him a lot more attraction.
This screenshot shows that on the date that Homecoming was
released, the @spidermanmovie Instagram account had just
under 1 million followers. This proves that the posts they made
promoting the film would have had a large impact on the
number of people who saw the film in cinemas.
You can see here that before
July the @spidermanmovie
Instagram account gained a
large amount of followers going
from around 600 thousand to
nearly 1 million. This shows that
a lot of people who had heard
about Homecoming followed
the Instagram account possibly
for updates and news.
7. Timeline
December 9th 2016
The first trailer for Homecoming
was released and gained a
positive response with over 29
million views and 200 thousand
likes. Three posters were also
released to correlate with the
first trailer.
When the second trailer was
released it also received a
positive response of 11 million
views and 130 thousand likes.
There wasn’t as much
attraction to this trailer
compared to the first one but it
still did really well. Another
three posters were also
released with the second trailer.
March 28th 2017
May 24th 2017
The third and final trailer
released and gained over 21
million views and 130 thousand
likes. The wait between the first
and second trailer was over 3
months but the wait between
the second and third was less
than 2 months. At this point
there was just over a month left
until the movie was finally
released so it built up the hype
for the movie. Three more
posters were released with this
trailer which used a different
style.
July 7th 2017
The movie was released and
made $880 million box office.
There was a red carpet
premiere for Spiderman
Homecoming. Tom Holland,
Stan Lee, Robert Downey Jr.
and Zendaya all made an
appearance there and there
was a VR game for guests to
play.
June 28th 2017
8. Conclusion
The campaign for Spiderman: Homecoming was successful because the movie made $880 million box office which was $705 million more than
they spent making the film. The film was a huge success, getting 92% on Rotten Tomatoes becoming one of the best films in 2017. The twitter
account reached over 550 thousand followers when the film was released, as well as the Instagram reaching almost 1 million followers. This
shows how successful the marketing was at gaining attraction. The posters that were released were simplistic and used repeating characters,
locations, fonts and colours. This made things easy to follow and understand which would attract to the target audience of teenagers since they
won’t want to read a lot of stuff and it is mainly visual. The purpose of the campaign was to attract the target audience of the film and get as
many people as possible to want to see the film. After the film was released, the @spidermanmovie Instagram account posted about how Tom
Holland was the fans’ favourite Spiderman and that Homecoming was the #1 movie ever. This would get more people to want to see the movie
while it was still in cinemas. The red carpet premiere for Homecoming gave the actors and directors an opportunity to make a good impression on
fans for the movie by signing autographs and taking photos. Overall I believe that the media campaign for Spiderman Homecoming was very
effective and successful.
Because of the successful campaign,
Homecoming became a “moment”
on Twitter claiming ”fans can’t stop
raving about it” on the day the movie
was released. This shows how much
of an impact the campaign made on
fans.
