Battleship marketing methods

MARKETING

Film trailers…• Trailers are an important part of a films marketing campaign, they are a advertisement for the

film• Trailers inform potential audiences about a film with the purpose of encouraging people to see

the film at the cinema • Trailers are generally aimed at the same audience as the films they publicize. • As well as using genre to gain our interest, marketing campaigns must also show us how a new

film is different to others in the same genre: this is known as the USP (Unique Selling Point) of the film. The USP is what separates one film title from another released at a similar time or within the same genre. The USP could be many things, for example: A innovative use of special effects, a interesting mix of genres or a leading star.

• Trailers are shown at the cinema, on TV and online and are usually accompanied by poster campaigns and radio campaigns to give wide coverage for new film releases. Dedicated trailer sites and official film websites often carry trailers that have been cut for a general audience and are suitable for viewers of any age, whereas trailers shown in the cinema usually correspond to the classification of the film being screened.

• Most trailers are produced at the same time as the film is being edited. The timing of a trailer campaign is important: it must be shown far enough in advance to generate excitement about the film’s release, but not so early that people forget about the film before it even comes out.

Battleships marketing campaign…

• The film ‘Battleships’ used many marketing campaigns including…

• Posters• Teaser trailers• Official trailer• Social networking sites• Star cast

Posters…The two main posters for Battleship both follow the colour scheme of dark blue toned colours. Both of the posters also contain the sea and parts of the ship and the sci-fi monstrous other appearing from the sea. Both posters also follow the tagline “ the battle for earth begins at sea” which could be the marketing campaigns unique selling point.From the posters you can tell that the film is sci-fi and action based and will obviously contain some mechanical monstrous other and from the title it is set on a ship.The posters also mention past film success ‘Transformers’ as

this will attract people to go and see the film just because they know the people who worked on Battleships also worked on Transformers so they will have preconceptions of the film based on Transformers success.

Character posters …

The marketing campaign also contained separate posters featuring different characters. Their was different posters for stars Rihanna, Liam Neeson and Taylor Kitsch and also the monstrous other. This is to attract different audiences to the film who may like a certain star and may go to see the film just because they are in it. Singer Rihanna was cast in the film which will attract people to see the film as this is the first film Rihanna has ever featured in and will will be intrigued to see what she's like, Rihanna will also have a massive following due to her music career so people some people will want to see the film purely because Rihanna’s in it.The posters again follow the dark blue toned colour scheme and all different character posters follow the same layout of the films title at the bottom of the poster the character centered in the poster and their name at the top of the poster.

YouTube channel…

• The Battleship movie has a official YouTube channel with 48 different videos for people to watch, most being the trailer in various languages so everyone can understand it.

• The channel also has videos of on set filming for people to watch and various ‘TV spots’ for people to watch.

Official trailer

• The Battleship channel also released three official trailers for the film the first being on 12th December 2011, the second version of the trailer on 13th December 2011 and the third version not till 13th march 2012 the timing of these trailers left enough time for people to discover the trailers and build anticipation between each one being released.

• The trailer revealed the basic plot outline for the movie and introduced various characters, the trailer also set the genre as a sci-fi action movie.

Social networking...

• Battleship has a official facebook page and twitter, this is so fans can interact with each other and ‘discuss’ the film, almost like a forum.

• The social networking sites also allow for the movie makers to interact with fans making them more likely to want to see the film and also to help further build up anticipation for the films release.

Stars...

• The stars in the film also count as a marketing technique for the film because the stars will do interviews on TV shows, magazines and radio were they will talk about the film and bring it to peoples attention.

• Certain stars will also attract different audiences for instance a female audience might be attracted to the film as it contains Taylor Kitsh and a male audience will be attracted to the film due to stars such as Rihanna and Brooklyn Decker.