Fall 2015Session FourAssembly II:

Marketing Campaigns and Promotional Materials Dr. Richard Nowell

12:30 – 13:30Talking (about) genre

13:30 – 13:40Break

13:40 – 14:40Marketing Campaigns and Promotional Materials

14:50 – 15:00Break

15:00– 15:40Analyzing Marketing Materials

The Narrative Image

Fracturing and Dispersibility

Positioning and Invocation

The Logics of Structural Polysemy

Have you ever approached a cultural product with concrete expectations based solely on its marketing materials?

Have those expectations ever proven misplaced upon consuming the advsertised product?

Have you ever been put off watching a cultural product exclusively by its marketing materials?

Have you ever found yourself consuming that product only to discover it was quite different than you expected?

The Narrative Image

Fracturing and Dispersibility

Positioning and Invocation

The Logics of Structural Polysemy

It is easy to forget that, broadly speaking, the culture industries handle two sorts of text; principal texts and promotional paratexts

Indeed the term “paratexts” is a tad misleading as it automatically subordinates marketing materials to the products they advertize

It may be wise to reject the views of those who dismiss marketing materials as aesthetically bankrupt commercial ephemera

After all, only a radical Romantic would truly believe marketing materials lack aesthetic qualities or that films are less commercial

Marketing materials are not only multimillion dollar software, they linger long in the memory, and contribute much to generic clusters

What are the purposes of movie marketing?

The immediate function of movie marketing is to posit in the public-sphere what semioticians have called a film’s “narrative image”

This rather misleading label exceeds the sense of story or plot denoted by the term “narrative”, to mean something more general

The Narrative Image refers to a more holistic idealized conception of the product; i.e. how its marketers would like it to be perceived

The relationship of a narrative image to its advertized film is thus similar to that between a star persona and its human embodiment

In this sense, it is a mutable yet finite cluster of discourses seen differently, and only partially matching the advertized product

A “narrative image” is a theoretical construct derived from all information marketing materials suggest about the advertized film

It derives from discourses in promotional materials like trailers, posters, presskits, and webpages; and publicity like interviews

These materials constitute a marketing campaign or make up multiple marketing campaigns across various windows of release

The narrative image serves multiple functions, as consumers are expected to engage with it before, during, and after viewing a film

It is thus intended to provoke interest, shape expectations, marshal engagement, and influence interpretation and evaluation of the film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHekzSiZjrY

What does this trailer contribute to the narrative image of the film it is advertizing?

How does Klinger suggest marketing coveys this ideal sense of the movie it is advertizing?

What does she mean by the term “dispersibility”?

How does she use the term “structured polysemy”?

What does she – and someone else whose work we encountered – suggest motivates these practices?

What does Klinger suggest are the potential affects of these practices on potnetial consumers?

Klinger, like Austin and others following her example, is primarily concerned with how audiences consume principal texts

She therefore finds marketing materials important because they inform the different ways viewers will likely consume media texts

In explaining this however, she offers us a useful entry-point into understanding the assembly and functions of media marketing

Central to her paper – and model - are two intertwined concepts:

Dispersibility: Media marketing is designed to fracture meanings

Structured Polysemy: it does so in a limited number of ways

Klinger suggests the structured polysemy of movie marketing derives from a) textual heritage and b) commercial imperatives

a) The components of a marketing campaign have a long history, so they will unavoidably and involunatarily invoke other texts

b) Maximizing revenue demands marketers emphasize variety, making a product attractive to multiple taste formations

As they consist of numerous components, materials comprising marketing campaigns will invariably summon multiple attractions

Each of these attractions therefore has the capacity to invoke other texts, and in so doing call to mind multiple genric clusters

Klinger suggests marketing fetishizes elements of an advertized film, decontextualziing and glorifying these as pleasure-givers

She also reminds us that these elements turn marketing materials and capaigns into gateways that lead to multiple generic clusters

Because such gateways are suggestive they can lead to myriad places depending on consumer knowledge, interests, and moods

They prompt consumers to play games of association, generating intertextual interpretative frameworks to make sense of a new film

Through such associations we understand why some viewers approach a film with distinct expectations, consuming it differently

In what ways does marketing position a film in relation to existing cultural products?

Evocation: on one hand, invocation encourages consumers to assume similarities to “targeted” cultural products

Distanciation: on the other, it might involves distinguishing the product from undesirable products

Care is needed as two distinct phenomena may be in operation

Implicit: an articulation can summon disavowed alternatives; allegiance to one genre implies others through negation

Explicit: Some marketing deliberately highlights difference, using implied contrasts to generate a structuring absence

We should recognize that film marketing usually avoids naming genres, but instead implies them by gesturing to a generic cluster

Eschewing labels helps marketers avoid alienating consumers who dislike a genre and may thus avoid a film advertized on it

This helps to ensure such consumers overlook a film’s affiliation to a disliked genre and instead recognize only those they prefer

Invocation – rather than naming – demands we understand the contempotaneous nature of the generic cluster being implied

This in turn demands we avoid imposing our current diachronic understandings onto the synchronic historical act of assembly

Invocing genres in marketing materials is thus intended to situate an advertised cultural product in relation to others

As with the assembly of principal texts we should recognize this practive takes a number of commercially-motivated forms

Text Invocation: consumers are invited to draw comparisons to specific products like a recent hit film

Trend Invocation: consumers are invited to see the advertized product as a part of an ongoing trend

Heritage Invocation: consumers are invited to see the product as part of a longstanding generic cluster

How was evocation used in the promotion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula?

How was distanciation used in the promotion of this film?

Why were these strategies used?

Many of the tools and approaches that help us undertsand the roles genre plays in film assembly are transferable to marketing

After all, marketing materials are like principal texts insomuch as they are anc an be approached as vehicles for discourse

For one thing, the logic of the producers game – evoking multiple hits to maximize attendance –applies to fillm marketing

But we might also recognize a distinct dimension of marketing materials; they can also invoke films/genres directly or by proxy

This proxy invocation involves invoking a film or genre indirectly, by inviting comparison to the targted film’s marketing materials

Following the discursive turn, genre scholars tended to approach marketing as a prism through which viewers might interpret films

By maintaining this consumer/meaning-centered discourse, they have tended to marginalize the logics underpinning their assembly

Movie marketing is used to posit an idealized partial image of the advertized film which semioticians have called its “narrative image”

Usually campaigns and individual materials posit multiple generic identities for a film in order to appeal to a range of taste formations

This process involves emphasizing, downplaying, and eschewing attractions/generic markers in line with market trends and heritage

Chose any one marketing material for the upcoming Star Wars film.

What impression of the movie does this text give us?

What genres and inidividual films are being invoked?

Does this text distance the film from any genres or films?

What types of invocation characterize this text – specific, trend, heritage, structuring absences, negation?