Summer has always been an important season for the entertainment industry, specifically in regard to movies. The summer box office season, which begins in May and lasts through early September, sees the highest number of blockbuster movies be released into movie theaters, as all major studios strategically send the movies that they think will draw the highest number of people to theaters and, therefore, gross the most money. These summer blockbusters tend to rely on some form of recognizable namesake to draw viewers; for example, the name of an A-list actor starring in the cast, the name of the movie being associated with a successful or nostalgic franchise, or the name of the studio being enough to draw fans of that brand to see their newest work.
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The movie industry has seen immense change over the past several years, and continues to evolve today. Two large drivers of this change have been the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased popularity of streaming. During the COVID-19 pandemic, movie theaters globally shut down, causing more studios to rely on streaming platforms as their medium for releasing films to audiences as opposed to movie theaters. Studios found some success with this strategy, and even as the world has re-opened following the pandemic, many studios are still releasing big-budget movies to streaming platforms only. Audiences have mixed reviews on this tactic. Some people prefer being able to watch new movies from the comfort of their own homes, while also saving money as they do not have to pay for tickets for every new movie that they may be slightly interested in. Additionally, they can watch new movies on their own time, starting and stopping if need be. However, some movie fans miss the hype and excitement of a new movie being released in theaters. There is also the hotly debated topic of streaming platforms in general, with people wondering if there has become too many different platforms for consumers to be able to enjoy all of their favorite media in a financially sustainable way, and if streaming platforms have allowed some brands to become oversaturated with massive amounts of content all at once.
With more people utilizing streaming services and some people still slowly returning to pre-pandemic habits, marketers for these summer blockbusters face the unique challenge of creating new ways to market these movies that prompts people to leave their homes and head to the theaters. So far, the 2023 summer blockbuster season has seen some massive successes, with many movies grossing over the $500 million mark [1]. Let’s take a look at some of the marketing strategies behind three of these movies and see how they have combined traditional movie marketing methods with newer marketing techniques.
The Little Mermaid
The Walt Disney Company always pulls off a strong performance at the summer box office, utilizing and relying on the power of their beloved and quality brands (Walt Disney Animation, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, etc) to draw audiences. This May, Walt Disney Studios released the highly anticipated live-action remake of the 1989 animated classic, The Little Mermaid. Disney’s live-action remakes are a popular topic amongst both movie and Disney fans; some people enjoy them, whereas some people would prefer to watch new and original stories and leave the classics untouched. Each of Disney’s live-action remakes has brought a different approach to the original story: some follow the original narrative pretty closely, while some change aspects of the story to make the story more fresh and keep audiences interested. Some of the live action remakes are even released straight to Disney+, Disney’s own streaming platform, and therefore, receive less marketing attention than those that are released in theaters.
Disney’s marketing team went all in, however, for The Little Mermaid. An important part of their marketing strategy was identifying their target audiences. While Disney movies are created to be accessible by the whole family, and are oftentimes marketed with children in mind, Disney also identified adults ages 18-30 as a core target audience for this film, as this would be the generation of people who grew up with The Little Mermaid [2]. As one of Disney’s most popular movies of all time, Disney heavily utilized this nostalgia as a means to appeal to this demographic’s emotions. The first teaser trailer, released in September of 2022, featured the recognizable instrumental music of the hit song “Part of Your World” and featured a clip of Ariel singing one of the most memorable lines from the song. This clip was also featured in the “Disney 100” ad that aired during the 2023 Super Bowl. Disney also heavily utilized merchandising and social media in their marketing, two channels that Disney has found massive success in over the years [3]. Furthermore, various merchandise lines were created, for all ages and genders in mind, so that everyone could feel included in the excitement for the movie.
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This Little Mermaid also held a greater meaning for a large number of people, as it saw Halle Bailey, a Black actress, portraying Ariel. This representation is incredibly important, and allowed millions of people, especially young girls, to see themselves in one of their favorite stories. This led to a phenomenon that is often forgotten when marketing a movie: the importance of word of mouth, which results from moviegoers being emotionally impacted in some way by a movie. Fans of the live-action remake took to social media to share moving videos and tweets of what the representation meant to them. Halle Bailey also partook in several interviews, sharing inspiring words on what it meant to her to portray Ariel. The Little Mermaid has since seen massive success, and hopefully, this will inspire more filmmakers and studios to continue to create inclusive and diverse movies for everyone.
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At roughly the halfway mark of the summer box office season, The Little Mermaid secured the third spot in the highest grossing movies of the summer, making it The Walt Disney Company’s second highest grossing summer release after Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, beating out Disney-Pixar’s Elemental and Disney’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny [4]. This success can be partly attributed to The Little Mermaid’s marketing strategy (which mimicked the approach filmmakers took to the film itself) of blending nostalgic emotions with showcasing the exciting new visuals and themes.
Barbie
Mattel’s iconic character Barbie is yet another brand that generation upon generation holds nostalgia for, and this summer, Margot Robbie is set to star in the first live-action Barbie movie produced by Warner Bros. The marketing team behind Barbie worked to reinvent how social media can be used in movie marketing, taking advantage of what kind of content tends to go viral.
To start, they released several teaser trailers, however, none of these trailers gave audiences a clear idea as to what the plot would be [5]. Would the movie’s plot be geared more towards children, would it be more along the lines of the camp genre with witty and ironic humor, or would it be filled with nostalgic callbacks to previous Barbie products?
With many movies relying on creating their own social media accounts on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok, Barbie took it a step further, creating their own website, the “Barbie Selfie Generator”. This allowed people to submit pictures of them or of someone else to be “Barbie-ized”, which led to the images being used as a meme template [6]. Actors from the movie posted selfies of them using the Generator, and a large number of other influencers, celebrities, and even brands’ corporate accounts posted their own photos as well. Barbie embraced the social media trend, incorporating it into their campaign, and saw an increase of mentions of the Barbie movie by an incredible 23,350% [7]
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Barbie has continued their social media marketing dominance through a number of brand collaborations, with a Barbie ice cream at Cold Stone Creamery, a Barbie X ALDO shoe and accessories line, and makeup lines with OPI and NYX Cosmetics, to name only a few [8].
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Spider Man: Across The Spider-Verse
Spider Man: Across The Spider-Verse, produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, was one of the most highly anticipated animated movies, and movies in general, to hit theaters this summer as it follows the critically successful and massively popular film Spider Man: Into the Spider-Verse. While marketing for this movie could heavily rely on the success of the first film drawing audiences to theaters, the Spider-Verse team still had to ensure that they persuade movie-goers to spend their money on tickets for Spider-Verse, keeping in mind that with the rise in streaming and economic considerations, most people are more selectively choosing which movies they see in theaters. They would not want to lose superhero movie fans to Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, or animated movie fans to Disney-Pixar’s new original film, Elemental.
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The international marketing team for Spider-Verse expanded the ways in which social media can be used for movie marketing, placing a heavy focus on creating unique marketing campaigns in different countries. For example, in India, which has a large audience, they created an immersive experience in front of Mumbai’s famous Gateway of India [9]. Social media posts from the studio’s accounts and from a variety of influencers included visuals from Spider-Verse appearing in front of the landmark, exciting fans as they saw their own country and culture being incorporated into the excitement for the movie’s release, even though that movie came from an American studio.
Questions marketing managers would consider:
- Why do you think utilizing nostalgia is such a powerful tool in marketing?
- How do you think marketing for a theatrically released film differs from marketing a film that is released directly to streaming?
References
[1] D’Alessandro, Anthony. (6 July, 2023). Disney, Despite ‘Indy’ & ‘Elemental’ Misfires, Leading 2023 Global Box Office With $3.4B. Deadline. https://deadline.com/2023/07/disney-2023-box-office-summer-marvel-indiana-jones-1235431049/
[2] Catalon, Thada. (3 June, 2023). Film Marketing Basics: Diving into The Little Mermaid’s Target Audience. Diversity in Cinema Academy. https://www.dicacademy.com/post/film-marketing-basics-diving-into-the-little-mermaid-s-target-audience
[3] The Little Mermaid: Lessons From Disney’s Strategic Marketing Approach. (24 May, 2023). Kimp. https://www.kimp.io/the-little-mermaid/
[4] “Domestic Box Office for Summer 2023”. IMDB. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/season/summer/2023/
[5] Reaves, Kali. (22 June, 2023). 3 Social Media Marketing Lessons from “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”. Scooter Media Public Relations. https://www.scootermediaco.com/2023/06/barbie-oppenheimer/
[6] Reaves, Kali. (22 June, 2023). 3 Social Media Marketing Lessons from “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”. Scooter Media Public Relations. https://www.scootermediaco.com/2023/06/barbie-oppenheimer/
[7] Reaves, Kali. (22 June, 2023). 3 Social Media Marketing Lessons from “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”. Scooter Media Public Relations. https://www.scootermediaco.com/2023/06/barbie-oppenheimer/
[8] Alfred, Lestraundra. (10 July, 2023). Barbenheimer: The Stark Marketing Differences Between This Summer’s Biggest Blockbusters. HubSpot. https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/barbie-oppenheimer-movie-marketing
[9] ‘Across the Spider-Verse’ Movie Marketing strategy jumps multiple universes. (6 June, 2023). Social Samosa. https://www.socialsamosa.com/2023/06/across-the-spider-verse-movie-marketing-strategy/
Images:
Image 1: https://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2020/12/14/movie-theaters-streaming-service
Image 2: https://cinematicslant.com/2023/05/24/the-little-mermaid-2023-marketing-recap/
Image 3: https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/27/us/little-mermaid-diversity-reaj/index.html
Image 4: https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/barbie-ken-character-poster-meme/
Image 5: https://secretlosangeles.com/barbie-cold-stone-creamery/
Image 6: http://indiantelevision.com
Marketing Management 