- •International business school – budapest
- •1. Introduction
- •1.1. Academic Background
- •1.2. Key Terms
- •1.2.1. Film Promotion
- •1.2.2. Promotion Strategies and Tools
- •1.3. Research Question and Objectives
- •If some of the release and post-release strategies - as practiced in the us - were adopted by the Russian film industry, filmmaking would be far more profitable.
- •2. Literature review
- •2.1. Promotion Strategies and Techniques
- •2.1.1. Promotion as Part of Marketing
- •2.1.2. Promotions Specific to the Film Industry
- •2.2. Comparison of us and Russian Film Promotion Tools
- •2.3. Main Differences in Promotion Strategies
- •3. Research Methodology
- •3.1. Research Design
- •3.1.1. Research Approach
- •3.1.2 Research Strategy
- •3.2. Data Collection
- •3.2.1. Interviews
- •3.2.2. Questionnaires
- •3.2.3. Secondary Sources
- •3.3. Methodology of Evaluation
- •3.4. Validity and Reliability
- •4. Data Analysis
- •4.1. The American Film Promotion
- •4.1.1. Secondary Research
- •4.1.2. Survey Results
- •4.1.3. Interview Results
- •4.2. The Russian Film Promotion
- •4.2.1. Secondary Research
- •4.2.2. Survey Results
- •4.2.3. Interview Results
- •5. Conclusions
- •1) To give an overview of promotional tools and strategies in general and in the film industry in particular
- •2) To analyse us film promotion through examples
- •3) To review the Russian film industry with a focus on the promotional aspect
- •4) To compare different ways of promotion in the two countries
- •5) To summarise a list of strategies that can benefit the Russian film industry
4.1.3. Interview Results
To understand all aspects of American film promotion an interview with Karina Mejia, Head of the 20th Century Fox Promotion, was conducted. The main purpose of the interview was to get the experts opinion on film promotion in the USA.
Mejia has been working as Head of the 20th Century Fox Promotion for more than 20 years. She thinks that the American film promotion became more complex and used more widely in the last five years because film audiences are more selective in what they want to see. 20th Century Fox is recruiting new staff to work in promotion.
Promotion is really important for the film industry because it is necessary to attract as much audiences as possible to make films popular and profitable. The company spared no expense to run promotional campaigns.
For example, in 2013 they run campaigns for The Croods, The Heat, The Wolverine, Epic, Turbo, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Internship and others. Mejia as top manager headed all promotion campaigns for these films.
The most widely used strategies, in general, are release and post-release. In her experience pre-release strategies are expensive and not necessary. Among widely used promotional tools she named trailers, posters, billboards, print media advertising, television advertising, Internet and merchandising. She stressed the importance of Internet advertisements.
She used Avatar as example for good promotion campaign. The cost was more than $90 million and a team of more than one hundred people made up the promotion campaign. They prepared release strategy for two month before the release date and started the post-release strategy immediately after the premiere.
Among risks to the promotion campaign lack of finance and experienced employees were mentioned. Too much emphasis is placed on resources to make the film but not enough on marketing, therefore the studio will work with two budgets in the near future, one for the film itself the other for marketing and promotion.
She agrees with the release and post-release strategies being the most important in promotion which is underpinned by current research. She also values monitoring customers in creating promotion campaigns which they do by frequent surveys. She also recognized the value of social media advertising at the suggestion of the author of the dissertation.
In conclusion she added that she sees promotion being one of the most important elements in the film industry which will employ young, creative personnel to popularise films with the help of the Internet.
J.J. Abrams, director and screenwriter, who currently works on Star Wars: Episode VII also put forward his opinion about the research. He agrees with the importance of merchandising in the post-release strategy which will appear in the forms of theme parks in the Disneyland franchise on both sides of the Atlantic.
4.2. The Russian Film Promotion
4.2.1. Secondary Research
Russian film industry experienced difficult times after the collapse of Soviet Union. Beforehand it was a powerful industry supported by the government. Nowadays the Russian government employs a policy of favoritism in deciding which films to support. Small film companies have no financial or human resources big enough to make their films and promote them.
Russian box office is potentially huge but not to the scale of the American box office (Plakhov, 2012). There are no effective promotion campaigns in Russia and there is a lack of government support. According to Duvernet (2012) a solution to this problem could be foreign film promotion, such as Cannes and Berlin.
American sources emphasised the importance of post-release strategies, while in Russia the most widely used promotional tools are word-of-mouth advertisement and the Internet. Examples to support this are reviews of BadComedian on YouTube which had more than 900 thousand views or Dmitry Puchkov’s personal website which had more than 500 thousand views daily.
To understand the success rate of Russian films in comparison with American films a handy example is that Christmas Trees 3 most profitable Russian film in 2013 earned $38 million, while its competitor The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug earned $44 million in Russia alone.