Warner Bros spent $100 million promoting Inception using the film's stars like Leonardo DiCaprio and director Christopher Nolan. They released teaser posters early without plot details that highlighted the stars and Nolan's previous success with The Dark Knight. Later posters provided more information by showing the characters and taglines about the film involving crime. Trailers were also released including early teaser trailers and later ones with more footage and dialogue. Additionally, an official website and mobile app were made to share information and promote the film through gameplay and features. Large posters were placed on buildings and TV spots aired to advertise Inception through multiple channels.

1. By Conor Fay
Inception Promotional Campaign

2.  Warner Bros. spent $100 million marketing the
film
 They used the names and reputation of the
people involved in the film, such as Leonardo
Dicaprio and Christopher Nolan as many of them
were well known by the public to have been
involved in good and successful films

3. The posters
 A series of posters were released in order to promote the movie
 One of the first was this teaser poster which was made very early on so
it has no plot details or character information
 The poster had the names of the most famous members of the cast as
they would have helped to sell the film also, they had a tagline reading
‘from the director of The Dark Knight’ which would help sell the film as
The Dark Knight was very successful so people may want to see what
this film is like as they enjoyed The Dark Knight
 The main image is a birds eye view of a city with the films title,
Inception, spelt out with the shape of the buildings. This image doesn’t
give much information about the film but allows the audience to know
that it’ll be set in a city. The dark blue filter sets the tone of the movie
which may entice people to see the film
 Under the actors name there is teaser text which reads ‘your mind is
the scene of the crime,’ this would let the viewer know that the film
involves crime and will make the audience wonder what it means and
possibly get them to see the film
 As this was an early poster, the films release date wasn’t confirmed so,
it was just left as ‘summer 2010’ and it is printed in red to catch the
audiences attention

4. The posters
 A final poster was then released which gave the viewer more idea as to
what the film will be like, as well as showing the main characters, which
they didn’t in the teaser trailer
 The main image of this poster is of the main characters standing in the
middle of an empty street, holding guns and with the road curving upwards.
This will let the audience know that the film will have violence and the road
curving upwards shows that it will be different than other films the audience
would have seen
 At the top of the poster, they have decided to keep the names at the top
but, they have enlarged Leonardo Dicaprio’s name so it stands out. This
would have been because he is the most famous and so he would be a big
selling point for the film
 They have left the two taglines ‘your mind is the scene of the crime’ and
‘from the director of The Dark Knight’ as these will help set the scene of the
film and attract people towards it
 The title is printed in a large red font so that it stands out from the rest so
that people know what the film is. On top of the title it reads ‘A film by
Christopher Nolan’ as he is a big selling point and then there are more
credits underneath the title, below the Dark Knight tagline.
 At the bottom, it says the films release date in a larger bold font so people
know when they can see it and also, it says that it can be watched in IMAX
theatres which could help sell the film if there are people looking at
watching an IMAX film.
 This poster was released alongside similar posters with individual main
characters on so the viewer can get more detail from what the film and its
characters will be like

5. Trailers
 A series of trailers were released in order to promote the film. The first
was a teaser trailer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5VDKVqvo8M)
which was around one minute long and didn't hive much information
away, just like the teaser poster, however, it did contain some images
from the film so the audience could start getting interested.
 At the end, just before the film was released, a final trailer was released
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hP9D6kZseM)which was much
longer and showed much more of the films footage as well as some story
through the use of dialogue and L-cuts.

6. Website and Mobile Application
• The Inception official website was put online
(http://wwws.warnerbros.co.uk/inception/mainsite/)
to help promote the film. The introduction screen
shown on the right, showed the films trailer. The
website could then be accessed to find out
information about the film such as the cast and the
production notes. You can also view a collection of
posters and stills from the film and play an online
game called ‘Mind Crime Game,’ as well as other
features.
• Warner Bros. also released a free Inception
application for iPhone which was used to promote
the film as it became successful on the Apple App
Store which raised attention for the film and acted
as a form of advertisement

7. Other Advertising
 Along with the other things I've mentioned
in this presentation, Inception had
several large advertising posters that
were placed on the side of buildings.
 They also had several short TV spots
which lasted about 30 seconds and
showed the main parts of the trailers but
shorter and were shown in the ad breaks
on big name TV channels
 Inception also had its own Facebook
page so when friends liked its page, their
friends would be able to see it and so it
created advertising for free and the
website has received 11 million likes
since so, it has reached a really large
audience from Facebook alone