The document provides information about marketing campaigns for a fictional psychological thriller film called "Sleepless". It discusses target audiences, genre, rating, release date and ideas for pre-release marketing including a social media page, poster, and teaser trailer. The marketing ideas are to first create a social media page on Instagram, then release a poster showing the film's setting and credits, and finally debut a 10-second teaser trailer featuring a flashback scene of the main character running in a field at night. Primary research in the form of a student survey is also summarized, exploring how audiences learn about and are interested in films.
2. Title: Sleepless
Synopsis: Sleepless follows a girl who struggles with Somniphobia. She’s scared of falling asleep
because of a recurring nightmare she has been having for weeks. She fears that the thing will get her if
she lets herself fall asleep again.
Target Audience: Anyone aged 12+, Both males and females, all psychographics and demographics.
Genre: Psychological
Age Rating: 12. Children beneath the age of 12, I don’t think, will be old enough to understand what is
going on in the film and the BBFC would give it this rating because of its dark-ish theme.
Release Date: April 10th. Nothing special, just a random date.
3. PREVIOUS
CAMPAIGNS
Previous movies have done all
different things with their
campaigns. Take the
Deadpool campaigns for
example, the fox marketing
team created a tinder profile
for the character, created
custom emojis, many posters
of him vandalising both
marvel and DC boards, even
though they are not set in the
same universe but the whole
point of Deadpool is that he is
breaking the fourth wall
throughout his movies.
4. PRE-RELEASE
MOVIE MARKETING:
Pre-release movie marketing helps to gain more curiosity among the audience
and bring forth more revenue. This type of marketing, of course, is before the
release of the movie, so this includes things such as teaser trailers, full length
trailers, co-branding, merchandising, etc. Not only do these things bring more
attention to the actual movie release but it also helps to boost the retail sector
of marketing as well. Many people have mobile phones, laptops, and they use
social media now which makes it a lot easier for the film industry to get people
interested. The average phone usage of a teenager per day is around 8 hours,
so what does that tell us? It tells us how it is more likely that teens will see
information about a new upcoming film before anyone else and therefore the
interest of those teens will be peaked, they will want to find out more and end
up Google searching about it or YouTube searching to watch a trailer.
5. AFTER RELEASE
MARKETING
After release marketing doesn’t include all that much, although it is
an important thing to keep the audience interested in the film. It is
likely that the film will have at least one social media page, for
example if we look at the marvel movies, there are over twenty in
that franchise so there is just one big Instagram, Twitter and
YouTube page with over 5 million followers on each platform.
These Social Media pages continue to post clips from the more
recent movies and sometimes even the older ones to keep people
interested. They even post tweets and videos of people being
excited for the release of their newest movie, etc… So the social
media pages might post clips from the film, or screen captures or
reviews even. They get the casts to do promotional interviews, if
you go on YouTube and type in ___ cast interview, you will see that
there are hundreds of videos of casts playing games and talking
about their film. Even more than this, there are television talk
shows where celebrities go on and talk all about the project, this
could also get more people interested who haven’t even heard of
the film before.
6. PLATFORM IDEAS:
For my three ideas, I decided to create a Social Media page, a Poster and a
Teaser Trailer. The Social Media page I decided to create was an Instagram page
because this platform seems to have a huge amount of users compared to
others.
For my teaser trailer I decided would just be the one long shot of my character
running through the field in her flashback, like I had planned in the actual film
but it wouldn’t include the scene where it keeps changing between the flashback
and the normal scene, it would just be the flashback for around ten seconds and
then the screen would go black and show the title of the film as well as the
release date. In the scene she is running in the dark so there wouldn’t be any
natural light. Ideally I would have a small light which would attach to the camera
and would draw attention to the character running away from whatever it is that
is chasing her and nothing else around her.
7. SCHEDULE IDEAS:
The order I would release each platform is: Social Media > Poster > Trailer. I feel like this
order would be the best order because loads of people use Social Media and therefore
would be interested when the account appears, the poster is next because then at least it
is giving the audience something to be excited about, they will want to see who is in the
film and by looking at a poster you can tell quite a bit about the film before a trailer has
even been released yet, and then finally the trailer. It may only be a teaser trailer but I
believe a short video is most likely to peak the interest of the audience. (And then after
this would be the actual trailer which would show the audience a lot of information but
not enough to spoil the whole film for them of course)
8. PRIMARY RESEARCH:
For my primary
research, I
created a survey
with questions
asking how
people have
heard of films in
the past and how
long they spend
on their phones,
using social
media. I
handed them
out to my class
which ranges
from 16-19 and
got a variety of
different answers
back:
9. SURVEY
RESULTS:
Age: 10% - 19, 30% - 18, 20% - 17, 40% - 16.
Gender: 50% - Male, 50% - Female.
1. How have you heard about films in the past?
trailers - 65%, social media – 20%, posters – 15%.
2. What genre of film are you most likely to see and why?
crime – 30%, comedy - 30%, horror – 30%, superhero – 10%.
3. Have you ever been convinced to see a film that you never initially
wanted to see? Why is this?
other peoples opinions – 60%, no – 40%.
4. What makes a film interesting to you? How do you think you could be
convinced to see a film from the marketing?
soundtrack – 10%, trailers – 50%, social media – 40%.
5. How long on average do you spend using your phone per week?
< 5 hours – 0%, 5-10 hours – 40%, 15+ hours – 60%.
6. Which Social Media platforms do you use the most?
instagram – 20%, snapchat – 60%, twitter – 10%, facebook – 10%.
7. Do you use YouTube? If so, for how long per day?
no – 20%, yes – 80% / [ 80% ] < 5 hours – 50%, 5+ hours –
50%.
8. Do you read newspapers or magazines? If so, which ones?
no – 90%, yes – 10%, / empire
10. WHAT IS THE
PURPOSE OF A
MARKETING
CAMPAIGN?
Marketing Campaigns are used to help reach a business
goal using multiple social media platforms as well as real
life. They identify relevant marketing channels to reach
the campaign objectives as well as influencing customers.
Looking back at previous campaigns, we see that the
Marketing Campaigns for the iconic Batman movie ‘The
Dark Knight’, with Christian Bale and Heath Ledger, this
campaign did things ranging from leaving the jokers
cards at comic book stores and bringing out ‘joker
dollars’ to lighting up buildings in New York and Chicago
with a giant bat signal on the weekend of the movie
premiere. These things helped not only to make people
more interested, but brought a lot more money to the
box office from people who weren’t initially interested in
seeing the movie. This is what marketing campaigns are
for, they help to bring in more money, more viewers,
more fans, etc. which brings more attention to the
actors, the franchise, and directors.
11. For my poster i am using a picture
of the woods, where some scenes
of my film would be shot. I
decided the best type of poster to
make would be a teaser poster so
it doesn’t give away too much
information but at least it shows
the setting, the title and the cast,
as well as who it is directed and
produced by.
12. SOCIAL MEDIA:
These are the Instagram and
Twitter accounts I created for
my film- I felt Instagram
would be the best platforms
because of the amount of
users the applications have
compared to others.
www.Instagram.com/sleepless_movie