The Hunger Games (2012. Hunger Games - Down With The Capitol. The Hunger Games: Using Social Media Marketing to Bring Fiction to Life. The Hunger Games, an overnight sensation in young adult literature, is only a few days away from its theatrical debut and is already making a splash in digital marketing.
By strategically leveraging enthusiasts, The Hunger Games has brought its alternate universe to life through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. For those who haven't been bitten by the Hunger Games bug (yet), it's a trilogy written by Susan Collins that takes place in a dystopian future after the destruction of North America. Every year, the oppressive government holds the Hunger Games which forces each district in the nation (now called Panem) to pick one teenage male and female (tributes) to participate in a fight to the death. The first book and movie focuses on the outcome of the 74th Annual Hunger Games where Katniss Everdeen, our narrator and heroine, volunteers to compete for District 12 in place of her younger sister. Leveraging Social Media to Recreate Panem an official citizen of Panem. Marketing The Hunger Games. The Hunger Games –the film version of Suzanne Collins’s best-selling trilogy of novels –has already sold out more than 2,000 screenings and is projected to have an opening weekend of at least $90 million (more than the first Twilight and on par with 2008’s Iron Man).
Will The Hunger Games be the first blockbuster of 2012? If so, what’s driving all the excitement? For starters, it’s worth noting that The Hunger Games is one of those rarities now referred to as a “four-quadrant” film: a motion picture destined to appeal to women aged 25 and over, women under 25, men 25 and over, and men under 25. Examples of other recent blockbuster “four quadrant” films include Pirates of the Caribbean ($305 million), Iron Man ($318 million) and virtually any Pixar production.
What makes The Hunger Games a hit across all four quadrants? By all accounts, Lionsgate started with a winning script. Integration of off- and online channels Reward loyalty. How ‘Hunger Games’ Built Up Must-See Fever. 'Hunger Games': Marketing The Suzanne Collins Trilogy To The Masses. Adapting a bestselling young-adult novel to the big screen makes things a bit simpler from an advertising standpoint: Filmmakers already have a built-in audience to target and bounce feedback off.
However, that doesn't mean the studios can run a hands-off ad campaign. Take, for instance, Lionsgate's marketing method for the highly anticipated "Hunger Games" adaptation. For the movie, the studio has taken a rather straightforward approach in today's web-centric world. As the New York Times Brooks Barnes states, "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.
" Of course, that doesn't mean they shunned the Internet completely -- the studio also had their hands full with a year-long Internet blitz on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and "Hunger Games" fans sites. [via NYT] How A Startup Powered Hunger Games Into A Global Social Phenomenon - A Money Machine. How 'The Hunger Games' scored a marketing win. “The Hunger Games” movie was expected to be big.
But no studio could have dared hope for this. Skip to next paragraph Subscribe Today to the Monitor Click Here for your FREE 30 DAYS ofThe Christian Science MonitorWeekly Digital Edition The first film installment of Suzanne Collins’ bestselling trilogy of young adult novels, which premiered Friday, brought throngs of fans to theaters, to the tune of $155 million at the domestic box office and $59.3 million internationally, garnering a fat $214 million in global profits on its opening weekend.
Inside "The Hunger Games" Social Media Machine. The success of The Hunger Games wasn’t exactly a long shot.
But then, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion either (see: the performance of best seller-turned-box-office-disappointment The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). An elaborate and ongoing social media campaign, orchestrated by Lionsgate and agency Ignition, helped turn a strong bet into a blockbuster--the film has earned more than $450 million at the box office worldwide so far. Lionsgate’s senior vice president for digital marketing Danielle DePalma saw early on how social media could be the backbone of Hunger Games marketing and would be the best route to engaging fans in a meaningful and cost-effective way. One key: assigning a separate hashtag to each campaign event. “Those really helped us trend because each one of those milestones had its own identity and helped it to spread so easily,” says DePalma, who, at 29, has overseen innovative web campaigns for such films as Saw, Kick-Ass, and The Expendables. Movie Marketing Campaign of the Month: The Hunger Games.
'Hunger Games' ads coyly don't show the Hunger Games. As anticipation for the opening of "The Hunger Games" reaches a fever pitch, a central element is absent from every trailer, television ad and online video: the games themselves.
It's impossible to imagine a commercial for a "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie that doesn't show a single buccaneer or a "Transformers" trailer without any robots. In an unusual and risky strategy, Lionsgate studio has crafted a $45-million marketing campaign that shows none of the titular combat, in which teenagers fight to the death while their futuristic society watches on TV.