Fox's Marketing for VDT - Final Thoughts

[fantasia]

EDIT: Tirian asked me to post the story on the front page, so I did. I don't see much of a reason to have a copy of it there and here, especially since it's so long. You can read my opinion here.

[true_narnia_forever]

Very well said - I agree!

One of the things that really bothered me and my brother were the TV spots. Things like the phrase "The Witch will Rise" was a lie and isn't in the movie at all. Also, I don't remember them saying "December 10" very often - instead it was "This Christmas" which I think affected the opening weekend numbers because people likely thought it was coming out closer to Christmas, rather than 2 weeks before.

I agree about the posters. Wholeheartedly.

[waggawerewolf27]

I totally agree with what Fantasia_Kitty said on the site, and have left some of my comments there about the marketing making it difficult to buy tickets ahead of time, making it harder to plan one's theatre excursion. Weren't tickets being released for some reason?

But I also wonder why, if there were posters, I couldn't get a 2011 Voyage of the Dawn Treader calendar. That is a terrific marketing device as it is not only practical and usable, it can be given as a gift at Christmas, it would have advertised the movie well, especially its glorious scenic effects, and some people might even have considered it a collector's item. Surely calendars aren't even expensive or difficult to produce for a marketing program.

[Tarquin]

I heard how they were marketing to the religious community like LWW. Well, apparently that community doesn't care that much about Dawn Treader, because they didn't show up. Which is a real shame. It was a mistake to do that this time around. As Prince Caspian proved, you can't rely on them to carry a movie.

[Josh]

Well the problem is they never marketed Prince Caspian towward the religious community. So they kind of lost them. It seems they tried to get that community back for VotDT, but it was just too late.

[Clive Staples Sibelius]

I'm not sure who said this, but I just thought it was a great point to make about the marketing. In regards to marketing the series, they should have emphasized each movie as an individual film more than as sequels. That way, there would be less of an expectation for a continuous story, which Narnia does not have like other series. Heck if they would have kept that philosophy close to their chests in developing the film, we might have seen a better result in the movie.

[stateofgreen]

I agree about the calendars. The two I collected from LWW are really useful and having 12 months to depict different scenes from the movie. But I really wonder if that is all tied up with Disney licensing as someone else mentioned in the merchandise thread. Really sad Disney dropped them and didn't give them another chance, maybe the marketing would have been better. They did hand out free Narnia posters at the matinee screening I went to last Saturday.

[220chrisTian]

Excellent post, FK. I especially liked the part where you said you did word of mouth when other Narnia fans seemingly didn't...

To me, one problem with this thread is that marketing/advertising for the film isn't over. At least it shouldn't be over. Advertising should increase once a film hits theaters, not decrease! But the marketing should be different. What I posted below was originally in the box office thread - where I think it belongs. Box office and marketing are twins!

Advertising is all about psychology. I heard once that a person has to hear something 7 times to remember it. Maybe they have to see it as often too. The US and UK [and some other countries] are TV/image-oriented. Glenn Beck, Liam Neeson on “The View” and "Wake up with Al [Roker]," Entertainment Tonight and Fox News mentioning Skandar and Georgie’s trip to DC – score for all this stuff. And TV spots are great.

But what about morning talk shows and trips to local bookstores? Disney did this with LWW and PC - while the film was in theaters. The cast were recently interviewed on Reelz Channel [US] and Sky Movies [UK]. And Ben Barnes appeared on T4 [UK] a few times, along with a world premiere special. But what about the major US networks? Not everyone has money for cable right now. And what about entertainment magazines? Are the actors and movie showing up in People, ET Weekly, etc? I know they did somewhat in November, along with UK magazines.

As I said before, advertising should increase once a film hits theaters – not decrease. I just don’t think the cast and film are in the public eye enough, certainly not as much as they should be right now. They need to be in the public eye MORE, especially once the film is in theaters. There were more interviews and DT-related events/appearances in the past month [past two weeks even] than there are right now. We're not even hearing from the music people: Carrie Underwood, international music groups, David Arnold, ETC.

I seriously think the problem may be Fox's marketing in the US and UK. I'm not impressed so far. International fans need to take this into consideration. Fox needs to saturate all forms of media. And it’s not about how much money they spend. How they spend it is more important. [Housewives can put the federal government to shame.] Something else: Fox and Co have marketed to Christians mostly. This is good. But don’t forget the rest of the population. I think other movie companies and Christian organizations can put Fox to shame.

[waggawerewolf27]

One reason why LWW did so well in Australia was because it was released on Boxing Day, the best time for children to go to the movies. This is the time for Voyage of the Dawn Treader to be marketed since it still will be screening this coming weekend in competition to Gulliver's travels, which so far seems to be the usual rather cutesy Lilliputian cameo, which is the usual travesty of Jonathan Swift's original satire of the society of his day. I've not seen much advertising for VDT around, just when it might be most useful.

A ticket to Tron entitles one to this dandy plastic cup with your Coca Cola. And Tron has been advertised in connection with other publicity campaigns. What is VDT doing? And I would have thought that had advance tickets been made available there would have been more schools visiting the theatre in the run-down to the end of the School year here, especially as the weather has been so rainy. It takes time and effort for teachers to organise such expeditions.

[Tarquin]

What can I say about the horrible domestic marketing of this film. It started lackluster, continued lackluster, picked up the week it was released, and now has disappeared. Literally i have seen more ads for tangled, which was released weeks ago. Now is the time that Fox should be marketing this to death. It is going up against a lot of competition this weekend. This was supposed to be a major tent pole of Christmas and it needs to keep in peoples minds. The common opinion on most Box Office sites is that Fox majorely screwed up the marketing of this movie. That they don't know how to create buzz, or advertise a fantasy franchise. That's definitely what it's looking like.

[220chrisTian]

Literally i have seen more ads for tangled, which was released weeks ago. Now is the time that Fox should be marketing this to death. It is going up against a lot of competition this weekend. This was supposed to be a major tent pole of Christmas and it needs to keep in peoples minds. The common opinion on most Box Office sites is that Fox majorely screwed up the marketing of this movie. That they don't know how to create buzz, or advertise a fantasy franchise.

All I can say is amen... Fox needs to advertise more after the movie opens in theaters, not before!

[Valiant]

I am not happy with the lack of marketing that we have had after the movie either. I wonder if they just ran out of money and therefore are unable to advertise furthur.

[moo25]

Here in the UK, I've seen nothing on TV advertising Dawn Treader, no posters roundabout, nothing. The most there is are some really nice posters in the cinema itself, but that's not enough to get people to view the film. I don't know...there are even some adverts on TV for Deathly Hallows still, even though that's been out for ages. Where is all this for Dawn Treader?

[waggawerewolf27]

Well, VDT has just got some free publicity from the weather. Just look at this news article! It seems that in one country town VDT brought the roof down!

We have had bad weather in New South Wales and Queensland, with flooding in Wagga Wagga (part of my user name) and worse still around Emerald and Rockhampton in Queensland, where an area bigger than France and Germany combined is flooded. In the affected country towns of course cinema viewing would not be a huge priority, however entertaining the movie.

Today we also had a series of storms blowing in from the West. In a Bathurst cinema the roof collapsed when hit by a storm cell with hail, lightning and heavy rain. The two cinemas were 4 and 5, and at first we were told one of these movies was a children's movie, where there were about 36 people, many of them children and even a pregnant woman. Then we got the linked Channel 7 report. By nightfall it turns out that the heaviest affected theatre where most of the moviegoer injuries were was filming VDT. Furthermore, they said it was a miracle that the injuries weren't considerably worse considering the weather conditions and that all survived, though several children were quite frightened.

Interesting that the weather decided to pick on VDT.

[CharlotteRose]

Here in the UK, I've seen nothing on TV advertising Dawn Treader, no posters roundabout, nothing. The most there is are some really nice posters in the cinema itself, but that's not enough to get people to view the film. I don't know...there are even some adverts on TV for Deathly Hallows still, even though that's been out for ages. Where is all this for Dawn Treader?

Couldn't agree more! I saw a few posters and a couple of adverts (as in 1 or 2) in my local cinema and in one bigger cinema when i went to a Harry Potter premier screening there was a big sort of display board, but other than that nothing! Not a thing! I only saw a TV advert once and I was like "Hey...how is anyone suppost to know that it is out!?" I mean, for a film that is as steriotypically English as roast dinner and the Queen, it seems that most other countries have had way more marketing attention!
Lets hope they do a better job if they make a fourth Narnia film (Fingers crossed!)

[the3rdkid]

It looks like Voyage has had a slow but steady success. I think Fox will learn from this, and their marketing mistakes for next time. I believe more money should be spent marketing to schools, Christian groups and Families. I think there should be ongoing marketing on social network throughout the first 3 or 4 months of the movie's run. This way, the steady interest will grow as we go along.

It's sort of obvious that the U.S. takings were a disappointment compared to LWW and PC, but I think Fox should see that the WorldWide Audience is more valuable for their pocket these days. I do hope they make TMN, and that it does better than Voyage. I hope Fox does a better marketing campaign visually. I saw some of the posters and billboards and thought it looked tacky, with bright yellow and a weird font for the writing.

One other thing I noticed is that, throughout the marketing campaign for Voyage, Aslan's face had about 3 different versions. This isn't unique to Voyage, it happened from LWW through PC. But as a significant character in the franchise, his face is not the same in all posters and billboards. It seems like they think you just need a picture of a lion and it will be Aslan. That's not the case. Aslan has a certain face in the movies, so they should make sure it is consistent with that in the marketing too. I hope this improves for the next film.
JP