Battleship Marketing Methods

Film TrailersA film trailer is one of the strongest ways of advertisement for a movie which is broadcasted via TV,

Online etc. There are several elements to a marketing campaign for a film, from the trailer itself to posters in the

street or on public transport, to online and viral marketing. The marketing campaign is designed to raise audience awareness and interest in a film in advance of, and during, its cinema release.

Trailers are generally aimed at the same audience as the films they publicise. Different types of people like different sorts of films and whilst everyone is an individual, there are certain features that will have a wide appeal to specific groups of people. In this activity you will explore the ways in which trailers appeal to particular audiences.

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.

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.

Several posters were released of the movie to introduce us to different characters so that we have an insight as to what it is about. By placing very iconic actors on the posters, it helps draw in a bigger audience who are fans of the individual actors themselves. The posters contrast and help us understand the movie a little bit more.The posters all follow the same colour theme and layout with the title always at the bottom of the poster. The mise en scene of the posters are all similar and have no contrast at all. These posters give us an idea that the audience would be teenagers/men as it has very well known actors in it that work on them genres. It also has Rihanna, an iconic ‘sexy’ person who men would find attractive and would want to watch for her. By including Rihanna, it also reaches out to her female fans as they would want to come watch the movie for her.

One of the first posters ever released to advertise the movie was an extremely simple idea which already raised tension and got many people interested. We have a direct image of a battleship being overpowered by some huge robot-like monster. We already get an idea that these are against each other. There is a quote at the top saying ‘the battle for earth begins at sea’ and these few words already feed us, the audience more information. We see the title of the movie and its release date. The colours are very dark and we can see already that it is to be an action-packed adventure/sci-fi movie.