Media Campaigns

In the modern day, media campaigns often utilise various different platforms alongside each other to create a strong bond between the product and the demographic. This can be very effective as you can target the set demographic through all angles of their lifestyle (for example by using social media alongside TV and print advertising all at the same time people will get the impression that they are seeing the product literally everywhere, furthering the bond with the audience). Campaigns also usually try to create cohesion between each channel of advertising by linking the various platforms and offering something new and different on each of them to engage the audience. 

I have chosen to cover Marvel’s Avengers Infinity War’s marketing campaign. The estimated budget for the film was $321 million, it was directed by Anthony and Joe Russo, and stars Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Don Cheadle, Tom Holland, and Chadwick Boseman among many others, who helped to promote the film using their own personal social media accounts and further promoting the movie during interviews and guest appearances on TV shows. This film is the culmination of the last 10 years of Marvel movies, bringing all the characters together to tell a grander story than in the solo films. The movie was distributed by Disney Studios in most countries, and was released on the 27th of April 2018.

This was the first part of the promotional material released for Infinity War in early February 2017 when they initially started filming the movie. It was a video released on YouTube featuring interviews with the people behind the production describing their vision for the film and showing concept art and short clips related to the final product. This was a serious look into what fans could expect of the film and get excited for.

August was when Josh Brolin (who plays Thanos in Infinity War) was interviewed and he continued to promote the movie by saying that he enjoyed being part of the production.

In November 2017, a huge stylised cover story about what was to come in Infinity War was released by Vanity Fair. This contained a diary of producer Kevin Feige’s stories and experiences during the production of the film, plus brand new information on the plot and characters that would be featured in the movie.

On April 10th Marvel released a video on their YouTube channel “thanking” the fans for supporting the films for 10 years. The intention of this specific piece of material was to create an almost peer to peer relationship with the corporation and its fans by giving the impression that the sole intention of the films is to appeal to the wants and desires of the audience. It also makes the fans feel special as if they were a part of helping the cinematic universe and were responsible for it personally, making this a very strong commercial.

On April 11, 2018 (a few weeks before global release of the film), Marvel released yet another video through their official YouTube account. This time it featured behind the scenes footage on set and short clips of the actors of the ensemble cast describing how much fun they had filming the movie (an element of promotion that Marvel heavily emphasized throughout the campaign to make the film more exciting to fans)

On April 22nd the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world was completely illuminated with a 5 day countdown until the release of the film, the imagery would change frequently and was dynamic enough to draw massive attention from practically all residents of Dubai. On the release day of the film, the trailer was projected entirely onto the side of the building, garnering massive crowds. This also took the promotion to a global scale, targeting a huge middle eastern audience rather than just westerners as American films typically do. This is probably one of the most ambitious and involved marketing strategies of all time, allowing the release of the film to feel like a special event that everyone should take part in.

Perhaps the most involved promotional element came in the form of an 11 minute long segment of James Corden’s TV show The Late Late Show, which saw the entire cast assemble to appear in a fun-looking, documentary style manner going around L.A interacting with fans and talking about their experiences being a part of the Marvel universe. This makes fans again feel more a part of the experience themselves and somewhat allows them to live vicariously alongside the cast. The video was released on YouTube on the global release date of Infinity War (April 26) and was highly received by fans, garnering the attention of over 15 million people on the platform alone. The release date being the same as the film would be a huge motivation for the audience to go and see the film as soon as possible because of their newfound relationship and understanding with the cast.

On the same day, the cast appeared again on the highly popular Jimmy Kimmel show, allowing for a lot more exposure. This time the appearance was more focused on talking about their time on set yet again. The video has a very playful theme as they mainly talk about props they stole from the set in a non malicious way. This makes the cast and film feel very natural and genuine, targeting the audience again by informing them of the sentiment and enjoyment that went behind the film to produce it.

Poster, trailer and social media page comparison

The trailer predominantly featured the most well established cast of characters, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, Chris Evans as Captain America, Chadwick Boseman as the Black Panther, and Chris Pratt as Starlord among many more. These actors also appear all over the poster. With Thanos and Iron Man being the most noticeable up front and centre. Marvel also ensured to make their mark with their recognisable logo just above the film’s title on all promotional material, letting the audience know that they will be sure to see their favorite Marvel character starring in the movie. The release date of the film is also highly visible on the poster, which Marvel took efforts towards to try and make a global event where the entire general public could be a part of something by going to see the movie (this would increase opening weekend sales and allow the film to gross more money)

On their twitter page, they promoted the film using a banner graphic based heavily off of the poster. It also displayed the Rotten Tomatoes rating of certified fresh which showed how much the fans enjoyed the film. Josh Brolin’s character Thanos was the centrepiece of practically all promotional material for infinity war. With Marvel attempting to make him a universally recognised figure. This was very successful with him appearing on popular merchandise and being talked about a lot online through social media. 

During the run up to the release, the official Avengers twitter page was constantly posting various promotional trailers, pictures and videos from each cast member to a huge reach of 3.14 million followers. This is by far the biggest social media page for the Avengers brand and was excellently and actively utilised to continually hype up and promote the film. They created cohesion with their Twitter account and YouTube channel, sharing the links to new videos over tweets to reach the audience on their too. 

Evaluation

The promotional campaign for this film was incredibly successful. Fans of Marvel anticipated the release for a long time, allowing every new piece of promotional material to be incredibly valuable, they also used the internet and hype in a great way to keep people interested in the film and allow them to go into it with high expectations. The movie itself was highly regarded by fans of the genre and superhero movies as a whole. While not the most critically loved film, the huge dedicated fanbase generally were very happy (a testament to the fact that the promotional campaign set realistic expectations). They effectively used different channels of marketing such as social media to integrate every cast member into the campaign, encouraging them to post images and videos (almost behind the scenes during production) to allow fans to almost feel as if they were there alongside the characters while they waited for the movie. 

Financially, the film pulled in over 2 billion USD worldwide, making it the 4th highest grossing film of all time. Their multi faceted and highly involved media campaign all over the world definitely helped this. Fans of the superhero genre also loved the film, with it getting 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics were somewhat harsher, with 85% approval, however this is to be expected with a film that intends to reach such a wide audience. There was also a lot of social media engagement around the film before, during, and after its release. With the hashtag #avengers being on the top worldwide trending topics around the global release date.