The document discusses different types of media institutions and how they operate. It defines institutions as companies that control or regulate media. It describes how conglomeration occurs when institutions merge to form larger entities. Vertical integration is discussed as when an institution owns each part of the production and distribution process. The advantages and disadvantages of integration and conglomeration are considered. Synergy and cross-promotion between related media products is also outlined.

1. What are institutions?

2. • Media institutions can be company that control or
regulate the media

3. • What was the last film you watched? The last
game you played? The last magazine you read?
Do you know who made it?

4. Typical Film
• What institutions were involved
in getting it to the audience?
Make a flowchart
• Who owns it?
• What else do they produce?
• Why might it be important to
know this?
• What is the box office figures
for the film?

5. Conglomeration
• Conglomeration is the process
whereby several institutions
join together (either willingly or
otherwise to form a larger
institution).
• What do these things have in
common? And what’s the
exception

7. Video of Marvel Film Credits

8. Vertical Integration
• Commercial institutions try to
combat the power of the BBC
by becoming larger and
creating vertical integration.
• Where an institution has shares
owns each part of the
production and distribution
process.

10. Horizontal and Vertical
Integration
• Horizontal integration is where
an organisation develops by
buying up competitors in the
same sector of the market e.g.
one music publisher buys out
other smaller music publishes

11. What are the advantages and
disadvantages of these sorts of integration
and of conglomeration as a whole?

12. How are video games
promoted and marketed?
• print advertisements
• large posters/billboards
• trailers
• television advertisements
• websites
• use of social networking
• merchandise
• press releases
• previews/reviews
• public appearances/premieres
• celebrity endorsement

13. Synergy
• In media economics, synergy is the promotion and sale of
a product (and all it’s versions) throughout the various
subsidiaries of a media conglomerate
• films
• soundtracks
• video games
• merchandise
• product placement
• tie-ins
• spin-offs
• vertical integration
• Walt Disney pioneered synergistic marketing techniques
in the 1930s by granting dozen of firms the right to use his
Mickey Mouse character in products and ads, and
continued to market Disney media through licensing
arrangements. These products can help advertise the film
itself and thus help to increase the films sales.

14. Cross Promotion

15. Cross Promotion
• EA launched their World Cup 2014 game with
cross promotion with Coca Cola.
• As Coca Cola gets exposure as the World Cup
choice of drinks and EA get spread the word
about their game.

16. Can you identify any video games
originally that were made into Movies?
MACHINIMA

17. Machinima
• Creating films using a game engine - Film
industry and video games industry working
together
• If film is based on the video game - cross
promotion
• If released at the same time simultaneous release

18. Identify a media product that
uses all the aspects of synergy
• films
• soundtracks
• video games
• merchandise
• product placement
• tie-ins
• spin-offs
• vertical integration

19. What are the major video game
publishers? (NOT CONSOLES)

21. Find out the publisher and the consoles the
following video games are available for
Publisher Consoles / Devices
GTA V
Batman: Arkham Origins
Call of Duty
Lego Marvel Super Heroes
Metal Gear Solid
Injustice: God Among Us
Assassins Creed IV: Black FLag
Beyond Two Souls
Mario Kart 8

22. Saturated Distribution of
Mainstream Games
• Sony
• EA
• Rockstars - GTA games, genre specific
• 2K Games (Borderlands 2 and X Com Enemny
Unknown)
• THQ Publisher (Saints Row III

23. So what do we mean by
mainstream gaming?
• Equivalent of Hollywood mainstream films include COD,
Halo, GTA
• Mainstream take less time to develop e.g. COD (2 years)
and lack sophistication in terms of complexity and graphics
• Big budgets, focus on profits and appeal to mass markets
• Mainstream games - safe genres e.g. Action, First Person
Shooter (FPS): audience expectation
• Mainstream games - sequel common

24. Assassin’s Creed Case Study -
Identify the advertising techniques that
have been used

27. The Results
• Ubisoft has estimated that Assassin's Creed III
has sold over 3.5 million units in its first week of
release, more than doubling that of Assassin's
Creed: Revelations.
http://www.thinkwithgoogle.com/campaigns/ubisoft-assassins-
creed-iii.html

28. • Visit the Ubisoft website look at the banners and
pop up adverts on the site and then discuss how
they might attract their target audience?

29. • Find a print/online ad for a game which is
effective. Write a brief analysis/annotate ad to
explain why it is effective in Media terms (chance
to recap on representation, media language,
audience).