Exclusive Q&A Interview: Movie Marketing (Part 2)

In yesterday’s first installment of our week-long look at movie marketing, we learned that movie studios have big marketing departments comprised of publicity teams, creative teams, and media teams. The studio gives them a budget per each film and it’s up to the marketing department to figure out how and where it will make its best use of those dollars. And the two biggest media platforms are television (commercials) and the Internet, the latter growing more and more popular.

We are fortunate to have an insider’s take on the subject. Our expert, who prefers to remain anonymous, has worked in marketing for one of the big movie studios for 7 years, first involved with specialty /indie-films, then moving up to the studio’s major motion picture division. Today we consider three Q&A’s that delve into subject areas that tie in directly to screenwriting.

Q: How does the studio’s marketing department coordinate an overall marketing plan for a movie’s release?

A: A studio coordinates a film’s overall marketing plan by holding strategy meetings…lots of them. We generally hold focus groups before these meeting where materials from the film are shown to different demographic groups. This type of research helps us find out the public’s likes and dislikes about a specific film. After we have the info we need from the focus groups, each department is involved in strategy meetings, where we decide what the overall message of the film should be, what demographic we should target, and how much money we should spend in our marketing efforts.

Isn’t that interesting? Here you thought you determined the message of your movie when you wrote the screenplay, but in terms of the consumer’s first taste of what your movie is about, it is decided by the studio’s marketing department.

Q: How far in advance of a movie’s release does the marketing group start planning for its marketing campaign?

A: Depending on the “size” of the movie, we usually start planning for a film 2–3 months before release. The marketing plan is tweaked several times before it’s approved, and can still be changed several times after approval.

A marketing campaign is a living, breathing thing that constantly evolves as a film gets closer to opening.

Some of the bigger, more expensive media plans can be planned 6–8 months prior to release, as those type of campaigns generally run media much further out before release (ie. Teaser campaigns).

“A marketing campaign is a living, breathing thing that constantly evolves as a film gets closer to opening.” That makes sense because consumers may not be responding to one marketing tack. Or they’re getting the wrong message. Or some event takes place which necessitates changes in the marketing campaign.

Q: What is the single most important component of a movie’s marketing campaign?

A: I think the single most important component of a movie’s marketing campaign is a strong strategy for reaching the audience that will make the film a success. If a studio has a strong overall strategy, they will stick with it and the films marketing campaign will feel cohesive. Of course, as mentioned above, there are elements of the campaign that will be tweaked as the campaign evolves, but the overall strategy will remain the same if it’s a strong. If however a film’s marketing campaign is weak, a studio is likely to change direction in the middle of the campaign, which can be very obvious to the general public. If a marketing team is not confident in their strategy, the audience they are trying to reach won’t feel confident in the film…spelling disaster for the box office.

I can immediately think of three movies where the marketing campaign just did not work and/or the studio ended up providing slack support: The Princess Bride, Iron Giant, The Shawshank Redemption. I’m sure you can remember others. What’s striking about these three particular movies is (A) they are all great stories and (B) they are all hard sells. And by “hard sell,” I mean that it’s quite likely studio marketing departments approached the movies with this question front and center: What the hell is it?

The Princess Bride: What the hell is it?
A fantasy? Comedy? Romance? Is it pitched to kids? Adults? And what about the no-name cast?

Iron Giant: What the hell is it?
Animated children’s movie? With sophisticated adult themes? A period piece set in the 50s? It’s funny, but also talks about nuclear devastation? Too adult for kids? Too young for adults?

The Shawshank Redemption: What the hell is it?
A drama? A prison movie that takes place over 20 years? No-name cast? Horrible title? No female roles? Who’s the audience for this movie?

Fortunately like most great stories, each of these wonderful movies eventually found an audience — thanks to videocassettes, DVDs, and cable TV (for a time, it felt like Shawshank aired on TNT every week). But it’s much better — obviously — if the movie gets marketed strongly upon its theatrical release. And if the studio’s marketing department has a hard time figuring out what the movie’s “overall message” should be, that can be problematic.

So let me tip my hand early on in this series by laying down my big takeaway from this week’s look at marketing: A screenwriter can really help him/herself by writing screenplays with strong story concepts.

As an example, consider three other movies: Sideways. Little Miss Sunshine. Juno. Unlike the trio above, these movies had no problem at the box office, each of them a smash success (compared to their production budgets). And a large part of that success derived from each movie’s strong story concept:

Sideways: Two men reaching middle age embark on a week long road trip through California’s wine country, a final fling before one of them gets married

Tagline: In search of wine. In search of women. In search of themselves.

Little Miss Sunshine: A dysfunctional family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant takes a cross-country trip in their equally dysfunctional VW bus.

Tagline: Everyone just pretend to be normal.

Juno: Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual decision to have the baby and give it up for adoption to the perfect yuppie couple.

Tagline: A comedy about growing up… and the bumps along the way.

It also didn’t hurt that each movie is clearly a comedy. No cross-genre confusion.

A strong story concept sets the plate for a studio marketing department because if they get the movie, then it’s much more likely they’ll figure out a strong overall message re the movie.

Plus a strong story concept makes BWOM (By-Word-Of-Mouth) much more likely: If you can tell a friend the essence of the story in one sentence, that makes the viral thing that much easier.

In tomorrow’s post, we’ll see what our guest expert has to say about story concepts as well as the impact of a movie’s genre on marketing strategies.

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