The document discusses the marketing campaign for Star Wars: The Force Awakens, which broke numerous box office records. It analyzes the three teaser trailers in detail, highlighting how they introduced new characters while appealing to both new and existing fans through nostalgia. The marketing spanned two years and integrated social media, merchandise, and partnerships to build massive anticipation. The film went on to earn over $2 billion worldwide, demonstrating the power of blockbuster marketing focused on a limited number of major franchise releases.

1. FEEL THE MARKETiNG FoRCE: THE
DiSNEY Distribution WAR
‘Only’ the 3rd
biggest movie of all time (likely to become number 2 in time), this is an exemplary case study,
demonstrating why economist Anita Elberse argues in her book Blockbusters that any large media company
has to focus their marketing and distribution on a limited number (of blockbuster or tentpole) of releases to
succeed.
It showcases the utter dominance and ongoing power of the franchise model – and suggests a weakening in
the classic distributor insistence on stars leading the marketing.
The sheer scale and variety of merchandising and tie-ins shows how much of tentpole marketing can be
gained for free and how much spin-off products can earn.
The deep integration of web 2.0 (social media) globally is a template for future releases – and the whole
campaign took a lot of lessons from another huge Disney franchise, the Marvel Comics Universe.
This is a perfect case study of a cross-media marketing campaign on a global scale.
THE STAGGERiNG BoX oFFiCE FiGURES
BUDGET: $306m
UK TAX REBATE (for filming in the UK): $47m (£31.6m)
PRINTS + MARKETING: $175m
NUMBER OF SCREENS ON WORLDWIDE RELEASE: 30,000
US + REST OF WORLD BOX OFFICE: roughly $1bn each
TOTAL WORLD BOX OFFICE (at May 19th
, 2016): $2.1bn; 3rd
biggest of all-time
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2. The film has smashed box office records across the world, including overtaking the UK
record, held by Skyfall – the only other film to top £100m.
It will almost certainly overtake Avatar on the all-time list!
Note how utterly dominant the franchise model is.
(Domestic = US box office; figures from BoxOfficeMojo.com; graph above from The-Numbers.com)
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3. THE MARKETiNG AWAKENS: A TiMELiNE
2012:
Disney, one of the big six, gets even bigger by adding LucasFilms to its list of subsidiaries (which also
includes Pixar and Marvel) for a cool $4bn
Disney announces a sequel trilogy is in pre-production; George Lucas will NOT be involved, pleasing many
adult fans.
2014:
December: First 88 second teaser trailer released in cinemas; MANY fans buy tickets just to watch the trailer!
Then released on iTunes and YouTube, getting a record 58m YouTube views in 24 hours.
2015:
April: 2nd
teaser premiered at Star wars Celebration event in California, broadcast live on YouTube,
StarWars.com and cinemas. The trailer gets 88m views online in 24 hours, another record.
May: Looking to the adult, upmarket (ABC1) audience, Disney gives exclusives to Vanity Fair (US
magazine) whose cover story is on the film, with photography by the legendary Annie Liebovitz.
More exclusives at San Diego Comic Con
September 3rd
: 18-hour live-streaming on YouTube of the range of merchandise that will be released
worldwide on September 4th
; pre-releasing merchandise is later hailed as a masterstroke, fuelling anticipation
and building familiarity with new characters. Games and apps plus a hugely multimedia website and
integrated social media campaign are all adding to the building anticipation.
October: Teaser 3 premiered at half-time on the Monday Night Football show on ESPN (US sports TV
network), gets 128m views … breaking the record again!
AirFrance announce “Flight and Cinema” package, with France amongst the first countries scheduled to open
Force Awakens.
Pre-booking opens and will break records across the world, including $100m advance US cinema sales.
December: worldwide release on 30,000 screens, including a 4-week block booking of every IMAX screen in
the US. The opening week US audience will be split 50/50 between under- and over-25s; 58% male; 20%
families; 9% teens. Records tumble across the globe.
Most major cinema chains have agreed some tie-in with Disney, offering exclusive freebies redeemable with
tickets – the Regal chain even offer exclusive art on their tickets!
The dual 2D/3D release is another smart move: many will go to see the film 3D and again in 2D; the final
split will be 2D 53% and 3D 47% of takings.
Even as the film is rolled out early news begins to emerge on the next film, as well as speculation over the
other spin-off movies.
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4. SEMIOTICS OF THE TEASER TRAILER
AGE RATING
12A (UK: BBFC), PG-13 (US: MPAA), also 12 in Luxembourg.
A true four quadrant movie needs a lower age rating to include the family audience and tweenagers and
younger children. It is highly likely that many under-12s will have seen this with their family, but as the main
cinema-going audience are teens and the under-25s these age ratings help ensure young and old (two of the
four quadrants) can safely be targeted.
With a $307m budget, a tentpole movie like this usually needs to aim for a wide audience taking in young,
older, male and female – and we’ll see that reflected in the trailer…
NARRATIVE ENIGMA + representation
Fade-in from black and open on a mysterious desert; this is already reminding older, adult fans of the original
movie, and the trailer will heavily emphasise the similarities between the two to boost appeal to an older
audience through nostalgia. Having the first character appear in this space becomes a visual shock, a likely
talking point.
Whilst there still remain relatively few A-list black or African-American stars (white actors continue to
dominate casting), it is
significant and symbolic as a
sign of changing times that the
first character is a black actor.
His identity, and status as
either a protagonist or
antagonist (hero or villain) is
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5. left polysemic: he’s in a Stormtrooper (villain) outfit … but has the helmet off, something we’ve not seen
before.
Non-diegetic music creates tension: long high pitch keyboard notes are designed to make the audience
unconsciously hold their breath, making them feel tense. The appearance of the character in the frame (the
medium close-up denotes he is an important character) is accompanied by sudden loud brass notes,
reinforcing the shock the audience feels, and traditionally signifying a villain.
At the same time a deep male voice says “have you felt it” in voiceover. This can be seen as a playful
deconstruction of common trailer conventions, with a deep male voiceover common, as well as on audience
anticipation for the film (they have felt the force of Disney’s effective marketing!).
As the character is out of breath and the non-diegetic music changes to fast high-pitched string (violin) notes,
and we see him in a high angle, it is likely that he is being connoted as a potential victim. Once we have seen
the full trailer it becomes clear that the lighting is changed to anchor which characters are villains, and can see
him as a potential hero; on the ‘light side’, not the ‘dark side’.
This is also a good example of why you should be careful in over-simplifying the connotations of colour: the
Stormtrooper uniform is white, but these we know are villains!
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6. KIDS + HEROES
The 2nd
character works on multiple levels: clearly designed to appeal to children, with the cute beeps also
creating verisimilitude (realism) as a robot, but the body shape also drawing comparisons with R2D2 for older
fans … and not being anything JarJar Binks a clear bonus for adults.
The robot is centrally framed, applying the rule of thirds, and followed with a high speed tracking shot, both
denoting this as another important character. The tracking shot also enables the audience to see more of the
mise-en-scene, with wrecks of spacecraft in the background.
The non-diegetic music is the same as in the first clip, the fast strings notes creating an audio bridge (linking
separate scenes) and connoting that both these characters are being pursued by the same enemy.
The fading in and out to black continues, a common convention of trailers, especially teasers.
DARK SIDE: STORMTROOPERS
If we were in any doubt that the music signifers were anchoring the 1st
character as a ‘good guy’ then the
flickering, dark (low key lighting) group shot of Stormtroopers provides a clear binary opposite. It is also
significant that these are presented in a group shot, not as individuals.
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7. Where the first two clips show characters running, here we get a close-up cutaway shot of weapons being
charged, with diegetic sound drawing our attention further to this, clearly anchoring the reading that these are
the enemy doing the chasing. The neon strip-lighting and red glow on the weapons, plus the weapon charging
sound, are all signifiers of the sci-fi genre, whilst the music signifies the action or horror genres that sci-fi is
so often hybridised with, widening its appeal.
The medium two shot of Stormtroopers’ legs shows them about to disembark from their spaceship, with a
smart bit of editing linking this to the next clip, where we see the 3rd
main character introduced looking behind
her – as if to these landing Stormtroopers!
Before looking at Rey, here are some reminders of some of the online fan reaction to Finn (the black
Stormtrooper) and her …
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8. CULTURE WARS: WHY REPRESENTATION MATTERS
A handful of names like Samuel L. Jackson and Will Smith aside, Hollywood, which dominates cinema
worldwide through the big six conglomerates (eg Disney!), persists in almost always casting white leads …
make that white MALE leads.
The Bechdel Test is STILL failed by most movies, even though all it requires is to include two female
characters who are named and talk to each other about something other than men!
Any section of society that is under-represented, or mostly confined to secondary roles, in the media is likely
to suffer psychologically; when James Brown sang I’m Black and I’m Proud 50 years ago, the very idea
seemed extraordinary, at a time when the USA still practiced segregation (black people had to use separate
schools, seats on buses, toilets, etc). Times have changed, but the outrage that some felt over the Finn
character highlighted that social attitudes vary widely. Daisy Ridley came under attack for encouraging girls
to suffer body image issues, as a very thin female – but also inspired an online campaign to get her included in
merchandise releases which just didn’t bother including the new female character!
The inclusion of a black leading character made commercial sense for Disney in helping to boost its appeal;
likewise, a stereotypically attractive young female encourages identification or aspiration from young
females, and potentially the ‘male gaze’ from young heterosexual males.
The social media flaming and trolling over the Ghostbusters remake is another example of the limitations and
downsides of social media, as much as it is a great tool for marketing!
Some headlines:
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10. SOURCES: Daily Dot: Rey too perfect; Salon: boycott toys; IBTimes: Rey in Monopoly;
WalterKaitz: diversity, get used to it; CNN: racist hashtag campign; TeenVogue: the Rey
haters; Guardian: Ridley won’t apologise
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11. WOMAN DRIVER ALERT…
Here’s what got so many chaps frothing in fury online – a woman, a prominent character, doing lad’s things
like driving!
Yes, there are issues over the continuing normative casting of thin (especially white) young women, but
otherwise we have a clear countertype here, and again the editing is significant, with the following clip
introducing a male fighter pilot – both are being signified as mechanically competent and skilled operators.
As well as this medium shot we get an extreme long shot tracking Rey, another signifier of her being an
important character. She is also linked through editing to a familiar ‘rebel alliance’ fighter.
We get further action signifiers in the following shot and a snapshot of the impressive CGI.
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12. The editing and shot selection here, just as with the opening shot of Finn suddenly appearing in the frame,
with the fighter abruptly appearing in the foreground of the shot, should help fuel the anticipation of viewing
this in 3D, whilst this also presents familiar mise-en-scene (and diegetic sounds) for existing franchise fans.
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13. ENTER THE VILLAIN
Maintaining the clear colour connotation, a binary opposition with villains appearing in dark, blue-tinted
night, the major villain is introduced, his importance being signified by a sudden break in the audio bridge –
there is silence for a few seconds as we once more fade to black, helping to make the entrance of this
character more notable.
The narrative enigma is built by shooting him from behind, obscuring his face. The high angle is perhaps
unexpected, and the almost comedy-style short burst of music that ends this clip adds some polysemy, with
the voiceover “…and the light” then leading to a daylight shot of the Millennium Falcon. We get a lightsaber
– but a new model, thus appealing to new and old fans alike, and promising some novelty.
THE NEW STAR WARS … RATHER SIMILAR TO THE OLD STAR
WARS
The very, very strong similarities to the original film were central to the marketing of a film that did not cast
big name stars (the ‘stars’ were those made famous by Star wars!) and to boosting the appeal to the adult,
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14. over-25 audience. The nostalgia is boosted with the classic Star wars theme being used over the shots of the
Millennium Falcon, with diegetic sounds of the opposing spacecraft just as familiar as that of the lightsaber!.
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15. FONT FROM A MEMORY FAR FAR AWAY
Adding to the nostalgia, and the use of the franchise itself as the main selling point, is the familiar title font. In
this and subsequent trailers Disney chose to use the LucasFilms brand (its here in very small text at the bottom
of the title screen), stating that the fans wanted the continuity (the previous films were distributed by 20th
Century Fox).
No need to put a specific date on!
TEASER CONVENTIONS
We get some exposition (information about the narrative) but more narrative enigma (mysteries) – the lack of
spoilers is actually unusual; many key characters are signified as well as what appears to be the central
antagonist (villain); we get a sense of the quality of the CGI/SFX. In this case the franchise links are made
very clear indeed. We’ve had a cute robot for a younger audience plus youthful characters and a hint at older,
existing characters to attract an older audience, with a mix of race and gender further increasing the potential
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16. mainstream appeal. URLs and hashtags were not needed – it is assumed that fans will easily enough find
these. Posters will likewise skip star billing or reviews, focussing on the franchise as the selling point and
presenting a wide mix of old and new.
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18. THE SEMIOTICS OF THE POSTER
Just a few points on this:
There are a lot of traditional elements missing, particularly the tagline. There is a billing block, but no star
billing. It is unusual to have quite so many characters on a poster.
Although Kylo Ren is the largest character, it is Rey that stands out, being centrally framed and with this
being reinforced by the two lightsabers also framing her. Rey is framed in an action, fighting pose. If that is an
example of positive, countertypical representation then a closer examination of the two shot of Hans Solo and
Princess Leia is more traditional and stereotypical – she is framed behind him, the archetypal damsel in
distress, while he stands in front of her with a gun, the traditional strong male protecting the weak female.
The polysemy of Finn’s character is signified by the blue tint; Rey is presented with a red tint, but as the
familiar characters and Rey are presented in more natural, brighter lighting, we cannot be sure if Kylo Ren
and Finn are binary opposites or (more likely) linked. That red/blue divide is also seen in the 2016 Captain
America film poster.
We get a range of action as well as sci-fi signifiers, as is common with this generally hybridised genre.
We get Leia, Solo, Chewie, R2D2 and C-3PO … but no Luke Skywalker. Refusing to reveal him was a
clever, unusual marketing tool, fuelling the speculation and discussion over what role he would have and how
he would appear.
A FEW POINTS ON MARKETING
As befits its status as one of the most expensive films ever produced, the marketing behind this was vast,
taking in a comprehensive range of social media and a fairly jaw-dropping range of tie-ins (a tie-in is where
another commercial brand delivers advertising based around a film, calculating that they can benefit from
synergies by linking to this brand).
GOOGLE IT
This stands out, and is clearly something that an indie production could never aspire to – Google offered fans
a makeover of their Google apps; they could select between the light and dark side. Entering the search ‘in a
galaxy far, far away’ also brought up exclusive Google content – which got more media coverage.
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19. OFFICIAL SITE + THE ROLE OF UGC/FAN ART
This is simply huge, offering merchandise, apps, games, downloadable images, exclusive videos (including
live streaming at key points).
There are prompts to become a member, and a discussion board is also prominent. Just as notable is the use of
fan art and general UGC (user-generated content), fan-made videos etc.
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20. CINEMA TIE-INS
Disney created specific bonus material for every major chain! Much of this reflected the expectation that fans
would come to view the film multiple times.
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21. MAY THE FACEBOOK BE WITH YOU
No social media was left out, but Facebook was especially full of content, cross-promoting every tie-in,
merchandise etc – and with its own exclusive apps and content, notably what has now become a major part of
smart social media film promotion, an app to change profile pics… 17m likes makes this a major marketing
force. Emojis are another great example of zeitgeisty social media, viral marketing.
A typical Facebook post – you’d be bricking it if you missed out on this.
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25. The franchise in figures (StatisticBrain)
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