Q2. How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?
Cross media promotion
A draft of what the Youtube homepage would look like once it has been incorporated into our viral marketing strategy. We ensured that there would be two parts to it; the film poster and the brand logo. Our ancillary texts retained a sense of continuity and were made relatable to our logo to further establish the brand, thus aiding us in viral marketing.
Considering we live in the web 2.0 era, cross media promotion is the most vital marketing tool at our disposal and the web has made advertising easier than it has ever been. We attempted to use the advantages brought by the web 2.0 as best we could, utilizing Facebook, Youtube, Email, Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 to advertise our main product and ancillary texts. Playstation 3's have the ability to stream videos on Youtube (Youtube now has the ability to rent out entire movies) by simply clicking a link or searching for Ping!. Youtube will also play another huge part in our viral marketing as the top banner on the Youtube homepage has to be one the most ingenious places to advertise in marketing history.
Furthermore the use of Emails is a great promotional device as i can include both ancillary texts and a link to our main product in a single email, then simply send it to all of my contacts. Once the product is complete an official Ping! website will be set up (eg: www.pingmovie.com). This site would be crucial to our viral marketing campaign as it would there that people would post their pictures of the Ping! logo being placed in the most impressive place, be it online or in real life. Not only would this help with our viral marketing but would also help establish a brand identity. Releasing the film on DVD and Blu Ray is a given, and thanks to the Playstation 3's ability to play Blu Rays huge amounts of cross media promotion could be done with regards to the Playstation 3. The Playstation 3 has numerous customisable features including themes, wallpapers and even icons. The Dark Knight took great advantage of these options and sold official Dark Knight themes, wallpapers and icons. Upon the Blu Ray release of Ping! several exclusive themes and wallpapers would be included completely free. As Blu Rays tend to sell for an average of £15 i feel the inclusion of extras would give the buyer more reason to buy the film, especially as downloading pirated copies of films has become so easy. Heavily persuading the buyer to purchase Ping! on Blu Ray is a marketing strategy that takes full advantage of cross media convergence as our target audience are teenagers over the age of 15, the most likely candidates to own and frequently go on their Playstation 3s. Borrowing further from The Dark Knight's phenomenal advertising campaign (that hugely contributed to it's blockbuster success) we ensured that Ping! had a recognizable logo, much like the batman symbol. The fact that our logo and film is related to an already very established brand lends itself to a plethora of cross media marketing strategies. Blackberry advertise their telephones everywhere, be it Television, Internet, billboards or the cinema, so simply being associated with them is somewhat a form of cross media promotion. But this promotion can be taken much further by incorporating our ancillary texts into their marketing. A simple but very effective idea would be to make the Ping! logo the wallpaper of the Blackberry being advertised. The Dark Knight's marketing campaign was so extensive that a Dark Knight phone was released with Nokia - i believe the same could be done but with a Ping! Blackberry. The phone would incorporate many features of our film such as a Ping! ringtone that plays our theme song, wallpapers, apps, the Ping! CCTV effect on it's camera and several other features exclusively available on the Ping! phone. Through this prime example of synergy Ping! would become a vastly recognizable brand, and may even boost sales of Blackberries as cross media promotion works both ways. We intend to make our film available on as many different forms of media as possible. Xbox 360s now have the ability to stream films from Netflix whereas Playstation 3's have access to Lovefilm. Making our film available from both these major retailers would contribute greatly to how well it does. Another benefit of releasing films to specific retailers is including extra content upon purchase. Previously unreleased footage and special features could be included in the purchase of our product over Lovefilm or Netflix and the same could be done with the DVD and Blu Ray. The rise of QR codes into mainstream culture has revolutionized cross media promotion as they allow any smart phone user to immediately access a media product. Seeing as QR codes can literally be placed anywhere their potential is limitless. As of late QR codes are being placed at Bus Stops, in waiting rooms, on trains and most notably magazines, hence the reason we placed one on our magazine. The advantages of placing a QR code on a magazine is that a passer by doesn't even have to purchase the magazine to find out about our product, they simply scan the code - free of charge. It's common knowledge that more people own Smartphones. Companies have been able to exploit the rise of the Smartphone through apps, especially free ones. As is the case with many films released today, Ping! will have an app. This app will be available prior to the film's release and will give a constant stream of information about the film, including photos of the actors and how far along we are in it's development. A very useful feature incorporated into some movie apps is a timer that counts down the days, minutes and seconds until the film's release; thereby alerting the public to it's debut in the cinema. Facebook has made it very easy for a start up company to gain some recognition through their controversial advertising. While certain members of the public may find it an intrusion into their private lives, they choose what information to give to Facebook. Facebook cleverly uses this knowledge to help companies mainly advertise to those who would most likely have an interest in the product. This new form of cross media promotion disguises advertising as social networking, simply because one of your friends may have liked a product. This would greatly benefit Ping! as it would primarily be advertised to those who have interests relating to the Ping! brand. |
These are some examples of cross media marketing that will be utilized in the promotion and distribution of Ping!
The Dark Knight's marketing campaign almost became as famous as the film itself, with products ranging from phones to pizzas.
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While a very top-heavy focus was placed on marketing through new technologies, we do not intend to omit traditional forms of advertising. Seeing as many people tend to take public transportation, especially teenagers in London (our key demographic), advertising our ancillary texts in places where people travel makes perfect sense. We were able to place the teaser trailers at bus stops due to their vertical inclination and place our main poster at numerous other train stations and billboards. The idea behind placing our main poster on billboards is to create a huge TV like effect, hopefully drawing mass amounts of attention to it.