Film marketing
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In an effort to recoup the heavy investment of making a film, movie studios would be interested in promoting (hyping) it through all means at their disposal. They often rely on expensive marketing campaigns to ensure that people will actually attend the movie on its release.
In addition to using more traditional advertising techniques, other different techniques serve this end:
- Advertisements in newspapers, on television, and movie-oriented websites can also help.
- Teasers, gifts and merchandising
- Trailers — assemblies of excerpts from the movie - screen prior to other movie showings.
- movie junkets, to influence opinion-leaders
- there have been allegedly use of bogus movie fan websites to create the impression of a favourable fan response[citation needed].
As of the year 2000, the film industry spent around $2 billion yearly in movie marketing.
It has been claimed that high ticket sales during an opening weekend can be attained by good marketing, regardless of the quality of a movie, as there is insufficient time for word-of-mouth, rumor and published reviews to inform viewers of the true quality[citation needed].
The poor opening weekend of some recent movies, most notably The Hulk, have been partially attributed to the increased use of mobile phones in the target audience lowering the time required for news of the film to propagate — disappointed viewers may inform others not to buy tickets within minutes of watching[citation needed].
[edit] Junkets
A movie junket includes any hospitality incurred for the benefit of opinion formers, such as journalists, film critics, reviewers, entertainment writers etc. The motion picture studio which is preparing the launch of a movie, or its distributor, lavishes entertainment and hospitality on journalists/entertainment writers to see it before its release, hoping to influence the critic to react favourably.
In addition to giving them the opportunity to preview the film exclusively and to interview its stars, the studio will often pay for all expenses incurred by the person on the trip, not limited to hotel rooms and air-fares. The unwritten assumption is that the journalists would give favorable press to the movie in exchange for the hospitality received. There will be strong hints that a negative review would make the studio less likely to invite its author to future junkets.
Some consider movie junkets a practice where journalism and marketing merge to a dangerous point. There is little transparency in that the writer typically does not declare an interest in the hospitality received when writing the review. As writers may become addicted to these junkets, they could risk writing too many positive reviews, and be branded quote whores.
The 2001 movie America's Sweethearts is centered on a movie junket.
