Lesson 8 Hunger Games

A Case Study

Production Details

• Directed by Gary Ross

• Produced by Nina Jacobson

• Based on The Hunger Games bySuzanne Collins

• A co-production from Lionsgate and Color Force

• Distributed by Lionsgate

Box Office Success - Issues raised my Media Ownership / Targetting Audiences.

• When the film released, it set records for the opening day and opening weekend for a non-sequel

• Opening day - $67.3 million

• Opening weekend $152.5

• It is the first film since Avatar to remain in first place at the American box office for four consecutive weekends.

• The movie was a massive box-office success by grossing $685 million worldwide against its budget of $78 million, making it the third highest grossing film in the United State in 2012.

Advanced Success

• The film was a success before it was officially released.

• On February 22, 2012, The Hunger Games broke the record for first-day advance ticket sales on Fandango, topping the previous record of Eclipse (Twilight). The sales were reported to be 83 percent of the site's totals for the day

• The film sold out in over 4,300 showings across the United States.

Tentpole Release – Media Ownership

• The Hunger Games is what studios call a “tentpole release”.

• The term refers to a film that the studio expects to “prop up” the studio for that year.

• In other words, they think it’s going to make a lot of money!

• For Lionsgate – “The Hunger Games”

• For Summit Entertainment – “Twilight”

Marketing Budget – Media Ownership

• Lionsgate has generated this high level of interest with a marketing staff of 21 people working with a relatively tiny budget of about $45 million.

• Bigger studios routinely spend $100 million marketing major releases, and have worldwide marketing and publicity staffs of over 100 people.

• The studio has been able to spend so little largely because Mr. Palenhas relied on inexpensive digital initiatives to whip up excitement.

Marketing Strategy

• Early promotion for “The Hunger Games” started in spring 2009, when Mr. Palen flew to New York to meet with publicity executives from Scholastic to learn about the book franchise.

• While some studios have halted once-standard marketing steps like newspaper ads, Lionsgate used all the usual old-media tricks — giving away 80,000 posters, securing almost 50 magazine cover stories, advertising on 3,000 billboards and bus shelters.

Cross Media Convergence / Targetting Audiences-Online Marketing Campaign

• However, the campaign’s centrepiece has been a phased, yearlong digital effort built around the content platforms cherished by young audiences:

• Near-constant use of Facebook and Twitter,

• A YouTube channel,

• A Tumblr blog,

• Iphone games

• Live Yahoo streaming from the premiere.

Cross Media Convergence / Target Audiences Online Marketing Campaign

• The campaign really sprung into action in May 2011 when the Lionsgate team started methodically releasing information about the casting of the film via Facebook and Twitter.

Online Marketing Campaign

• Twitter became an integral part of the marketing campaign for “The Hunger Games”

• Fans anticipating the film could actively engage with Lionsgate via social networking.

• It was an easy way for fans to be constantly updated on the progress of the film and thus build momentum for the release of the film.

• In July 2011 the first official poster was released via Facebook.

• Later the same month the first look at photographs of the cast on set were released over twitter.

• Early in August the official release date for the second film “Catching Fire” was released

July 2011 - ComiCon

• They had a stand at Comiccon

• Gave out copies of a new poster to fans

Teaser Trailer

• In August 2011 came a one-minute sneak peek, introduced online at MTV.com. People liked it but complained — loudly — that it wasn’t enough. “We weren’t prepared for that level of we-demand-more pushback,” Mr. Palen said.

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsVNNHs3RZE&feature=player_embedded

The footage did include a Twitter prompt through which fans could discover a Web site for the movie, TheCapitol.pn.

http://thecapitol.pn/

• The Capitol is where the Hunger Games take place. The site allowed visitors to make digital ID cards as if they lived in Panem, the movie’s futuristic society; more than 800,000 people have created them.

• October included another Twitter stunt, this time meant to allow those ID makers to campaign online to be elected mayor of various districts of Panem.

Main Trailer

• November ‘11 marked the iTunes release of the main trailer, which received eight million views in its first 24 hours.

• Again, Twitter was used to build up hype prior to the release.

Marketing Campaign

• In January 2012 posters were released that featured the main characters of the film.

Online Twitter Puzzle

• On Dec. 15, 100 days before the movie’s release, the studio created a new poster and cut it into 100 puzzle pieces.

• It then gave digital versions of those pieces to 100 Web sites and asked them to post their puzzle piece on Twitter in lockstep.

• Fans had to search Twitter to put together the poster, either by printing out the pieces and cutting them out or using a program like Photoshop.

• A 100-piece online puzzle.

• “The Hunger Games” trended worldwide on Twitter within minutes.

• “It was a silly little stunt, but it worked — bam,” Mr. Palen said.

Tumblr

• A lavish Tumblrblog called Capitol Couture dedicated to the movie’s unique fashions.

Synergy

• “The Hunger Games Adventures” was released on the same day as the film and took the form of a social networking platform

Publicity Stunts

• One important online component involved a sweepstakes to bring five fans to the movie’s North Carolina set.

• Notably, Lionsgate invited no reporters: The studio did not want consumers thinking this was another instance of Hollywood trying to force-feed them a movie through professional filters. “People used to be O.K. with studios telling them what to like,” Ms. DePalma said. “Not anymore. Now it’s, ‘You don’t tell us, we tell you.’ ”

Capitol TV

• Capitol TV arrived in February 2012

• A YouTube channel designed to look like the official network of “Panem”.

• It combined sneak previews of film footage and user-generated “Hunger Games” videos

• “You’ve got to constantly give people something new to get excited about, but we also had another goal in mind,” Ms. DePalma said. “How do we best sustain online interest until the DVD comes out?”

The Super Bowl

• Lions gate revealed a new trailer for the film at Americans Super Bowl in February 2012.

• The Super Bowl is the annual championship game of the National Football League (NFL) and is a huge event in America’s calendar

Publicity Stunts

• Throughout March 2012 various members of the cast toured “malls” (shopping centres) across America

Synergy

• Lionsgate joined Scribd, Donorschoose.Org, and Scholastic, for The Hunger Games national literacy month campaign

• Throughout the month of September, any fan that read The Hunger Games in the Scribd social reader application was entered in “Read a Chapter, Win a Library” for a chance to win a classroom library of books for one of the public schools served by DonorsChoose.org.

• From left, Julie Fontaine, Tim Palen and Danielle DePalma, the movie's marketers.

• The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film, but in truth Hollywood’s new promotional paradigm involves a digital hard sell in which little is left to chance — as becomes apparent in a rare step-by-step tour through the timetable and techniques used by Lionsgate to assure that “The Hunger Games” becomes a box office phenomenon

Controversy

• Along the way the studio had to navigate some unusually large pitfalls, chief among them the film’s tricky subject matter of children killing children for a futuristic society’s televised amusement.

• The trilogy of novels, written by Suzanne Collins, is critical of violence as entertainment, not an easy line for a movie marketer to walk, even though the movie itself is quite tame in its depiction of killing.

Controversy

• “The beam for this movie is really narrow, and it’s a sheer drop to your death on either side,” said Mr. Palen, during an unusually candid two-hour presentation of his “Hunger Games” strategy at the studio’s offices.

A Ready Made Fan Base!

• A built-in fan base for “The Hunger Games” certainly helps its prospects. More than 24 million copies of “The Hunger Games” trilogy are in print in the United States alone. About 9.6 million copies were in circulation domestically when the movie’s marketing campaign intensified last summer, so Lionsgate’s efforts appear to have sold the book as well as the movie.

Meticulous Planning

• They assigned one team member to cultivate “Hunger Games” fan blogs.

• Danielle DePalma, senior vice president for digital marketing, drafted a chronology for the entire online effort, using spreadsheets (coded in 12 colors) that detailed what would be introduced on a day-by-day, and even minute-by-minute, basis over months.

• “Nov. 17: Facebook posts — photos, Yahoo brand page goes live.”)

Exhibition

• The film was released in March 2012 in both conventional cinemas and digital IMAX cinemas.

•

Controversy

• Last summer, the Lionsgate team, including Nina Jacobson, a producer, and Joe Drake, then the studio’s top movie executive, started debating how to handle the movie’s subject.

• The usual move would have been to exploit imagery from the games in TV commercials. How else would men in particular get excited about the movie? But Mr. Palen was worried.

Controversy

• This book is on junior high reading lists, but kids killing kids, even though it’s handled delicately in the film, is a potential perception problem in marketing,” he said.

• One morning, he floated a radical idea: what about never showing the games at all in the campaign? Some team members were incredulous; after all, combat scenes make up more than half the movie. “There was a lot of, ‘You’ve got to be kidding. I don’t see how we can manage that,’ ” Mr. Palen recalled.

Controversy

• Eventually, he prevailed. “Everyone liked the implication that if you want to see the games you have to buy a ticket,” he said. Boundaries were also established involving how to position plot developments; in the movie, 24 children fight to the death until one wins, but “we made a rule that we would never say ‘23 kids get killed,’ ” Mr. Palensaid. “We say ‘only one wins.’ ” The team also barred the phrase “Let the games begin.”

• “This is not about glorifying competition; these kids are victims,” Mr. Palen said. A few months later, when a major entertainment magazine planned to use “Let the Games Begin” as the headline on a “Hunger Games” cover, Ms. Fontaine, traveling in London, frantically worked her cellphone until editors agreed to change it.

More resources

• http://www.forbes.com/sites/siliconangle/2012/03/25/how-a-startup-powered-hunger-games-into-a-global-social-phenomenon-a-money-machine/