L03 - Task 4

Introduction

Hi my name is Matthew and welcome back to my 3rd video on behalf of educational company Education Wise. Today I will be looking at how 20^th Century Fox distributes media (especially my chosen film ‘Dawn of the planet apes’ to its target audience and also how the company distributes its products as a whole.

The word ‘distribution’ means getting a product to its audience, but also means advertising or promoting a product. This happens with media producers to get their products to the consumer; and in recent years has become a lot more of a digital (and therefore cheaper) process.

Distribution through technological convergence

In recent years, technology has improved massively over all different products. One product that has become a lot cheaper to distribute has been film. Films were at first analogue products meaning that they were distributed using film reels – heavy disks which consisted on the film being imprinted upon it. These film reels were expensive to manufacture and distribute, costing 10’s of thousands of pounds to transport to cinemas. More recently due to the technological convergence, cinemas were installed with 4k projectors allowing transportation of films on hard drive disks (HDD’s) rather than the older film reel, being cheaper and re-useable.

Another way the film industry has been impacted by the switch between analogue and digital, was the release of web 2.0 in 2004, in which the web was revolutionised so that people of all ages could access it. This meant that the production of films could be advertised and distributed to online retailers (including online streaming sites) making for a larger audience reached and more revenue gained.

Distributed locations

The film ‘Dawn of the Planet apes’ is viewable over different platforms, allowing a wider target audience to be reached maximising its view count and therefore escalates the amount of sales, leading to the company (20^th Century Fox) earning more money overall. The film was first released in cinema (which is a form of converged technology) on July 14^th 2014 in the UK, but now has been released on multiple other platforms, including: Sky Store, iTunes, Google’s Play Store, Blu-Ray and DVD and on DVD.com (owned by Netflix).

The film being released in cinema allowed 20^th Century Fox’s subsidiary Sky, to premiere the film before its initial release. This increased the advertisement of the film through synergy (more later) and also allowed more people to know about the film’s existence which is good as the film is targeted towards a mass audience, meaning a global audience, allowing people to realise about this 20^th Century Fox Blockbuster.

The film was also released to rent on iTunes, Google Play and DVD.com all of which are a form of technological convergence; that is, because the film can therefore be downloaded and watched on any form of `smart` device, including tablets, smartphones, computers and now ever TV’s. For example, the film could be purchased to view for 7 days, and then downloaded on a smartphone to be watched whilst away from home. Upon returning home Dawn of the Planet Apes could then be downloaded on a smart TV and watched from the point the viewer ended at earlier. This new technology allows more viewers to consider watching films, as it provides more opportunities to watch the film than ever before.

The film was also released on DVD and Blu-Ray, two major forms of media distribution. This allowed people to watch the film who had missed it at cinemas, or who simply enjoyed it so much they wished to watch it again. Although the domestic box office revenue generated ~$208,545,589, the film being released on DVD increased revenue domestically by ~$22,544,899 and a further approximate $17,896,526 from Blu-ray sales. Compared to the films budget of $225,000,000 the selling of the DVD’s plus the Blu-Ray allowed just domestically for the film to break profits, allowing all international sales to be additions to the profit margin. Unfortunately no statistics were available for online sales, but this will have also been a large amount.

Advertising for `Dawn of the planet apes`

Marketing a film is almost as important as its distribution, as without correct marketing no-one would know about the film, causing minimal profits to the company and failure to the film. New forms of marketing have also allowed companies to view who is watching the adverts, allowing them to generate a mock target audience for future films, benefiting the company greatly. Due to Dawn of the Planet Apes being a blockbuster and aimed at a mass audience, 20^th Century Fox decided to take a bold approach when advertising the film; to which the advert was displayed on ITV during the half time advertisements for the semi-finals of the 2014 world cup. This huge advertisement was backed with a five day print and broadcast campaign, including a cover for the chocolate bar ‘Timeout’ and AV output to major radio stations such as KISS UK, Kerrang!, Planet Rock and Absolute radio. Furthermore the film was advertised on global social media site YouTube, showing examples of technological convergence.

20^th Century Fox really headed for advertisements on new media rather than traditional old media such as print or radio; and this could be due to the target audience selected for the film as many teenagers would prefer to sit and watch television rather than read a print advertisement. Nevertheless 20^th Century Fox did still advertise on traditional old media such as radio and print to promote the film a bit more, allowing more profits to be earned overall.

Viewing figures heavily show the success of international advertisement with an overall net worldwide gross of $710,487,433 generated for the film. This shows the success of the advertising as without worldwide distribution/marketing, the film only domestically generated $208,545,589 which put the company ~$16,500,000 down due to a huge film budget of $225,000,000. Furthermore, advertising will also generate ‘hype’ for a film, meaning more people will want to view the film upon initial release, which can be shown as successful due to $72,611,427 being generated for the film within the first week! Showing success in the marketing of the film.

Most of the time, advertisements can be more successful if partnered with a subsidiary of the company or in a joint venture/cross promotion with another company. Dawn of the Planet Apes followed this advertisement strategy and teamed up with online internet security company ‘Bulldog’ to offer a Dawn of the Planet Apes themed competition where winners could win a film themed holiday to Spain as well as one year’s Bulldog internet security. This allowed for the Dawn of the Planet Apes film to be noticed by more consumers who may not have heard of the film already, leading to a higher view count for the film therefore leading to more revenue being generated. 20^th Century Fox also took another bold move by partnering with games developer ‘Ndemic Creations’ to add purchasable downloadable content to their hit mobile game ‘Plague Inc’. The download allowed players to create their own virus to take over the world in the style of the virus in the Dawn of the Planet Apes movie. This partnership was widely successful, as a Google searching the game lead to a page for Dawn of the Planet Apes being suggested, which would in turn catch the eyes of more potential viewers. Finally 20^th Century Fox also worked with FOX TV (a subsidiary of 20^th Century Fox) to promote their film as a ‘summer blockbuster’. This is an example of cross-promotion and also a form of synergy.

Due to recent technological advancements of the internet, and release of web 2.0 in 2002, film companies have been able to benefit greatly in the means of promoting, distributing and communicating about products created by the company. Communication was one of the greatest features of this allowing the audience of films to feedback to the companies in the form of social media, film ratings and much more. 20^th Century Fox’s film Dawn of the Planet Apes was no exception to this, having multiple occurrences of marketing on the modernised web. An interactive website allows viewers to take a quiz about the film, which suggests what character in the film they are most similar to based on their answers. 
This not only allows 20^th Century Fox to survey its target audience, but also acts as an advertising technique, making people want to watch the film if they haven’t already by providing them with character information which they might not be able to relate to until they have watched the film. 20^th Century Fox also promoted the film through social media, with Dawn of the Planet Apes having a Twitter and Facebook Page, as well as a YouTube Channel. This once again does not only act as marketing technique, but also allows the audience of the film directly communicate with the people who made the film, allowing more specific target audience criteria to be input into further sequels etc. The company also uses well knows cast/crew to speak about the film as a form of indirect promotion. An example of this for Dawn of the Planet Apes comes from Matt Reeves, who is the director of the film and who posted an interview on the Dawn of the Planet Apes YouTube Page. Finally well-known film review site ‘Rotten Tomatoes’ allows users to interact with the film by providing reviews on the film that may affect sales, viewing figures or overall company reputation. It also again allows an indirect film promotion, with examples for Dawn of the Planet Apes being SciFiNow who commented ‘This is a confident sequel from Reeves and company; gripping, moving and recommended’.   

Overall this new form of marketing has proven extremely successful with film companies and many other companies as a whole. It can only be expected to be improved upon in the future, with the IoT (internet of things) soon to become a reality.

Once again I’ve been Matthew Milan and thank you for watching this educational resource.

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