Marketing

The Avatar marketing campaign is an excellent example of synergy used to create a much wider audience to market to, and 'sells' the film to them more successfully. The marketing was done by 20th Century Fox, which cost $150 to carry out on such a big scale, worldwide.

The internet is the biggest venue for marketing, with it appealing to a large audience much easier along with reaching a large proportion of their target audience: teenagers and young adults. The film had two websites on which it displayed all types of media to do with the film.

• The Official Website (See Official Avatar Movie Website in Links). This had links to all the aspects to do with the film such as trailers, an interactive download to further more build on the target audience being youngsters, songs from the film and toys etc. This is the main website that sees it from the angle of being an exclusive film to see. It first shows a page with the films accomplishments already with reviews from big magazines and award nominations, before going to show the full trailer. It then goes to the site where you can browse through the different features.

• The AVTR website (see Links). The second website is one to do with the narrative and draws the audience into the film, with it being a fully interactive site. The AVTR site is a fictional website to do with the Military operation taking place on Pandora, and invited the user to recruit. This interacts with the audience, but also makes the whole experience more real and makes the film feel like a possibility and not a fantasy, drawing more viewers to see the film. This then ties in with Coke and has an advertising deal with them, with it being advertised on their merchandise as shown above. They even created a teaser with the Coke advertising to promote the film further. The advert even incorporates the 3D technology and the stunning visual aspects that you get to see within the movie by placing the viewer not in front of the film, but in front of the screen with the aircraft coming out of the screen.

• Facebook was another medium on which Avatar advertised its film, along with marketing on Twitter, mySpace, youtube and flickr. These social networking sites all meant more and more youth finding out more about the film, which was a big chunk in the target audience for the film. Teenagers and young adults being the majority of film goers meant that they were the ones that Avatar needed to appeal to for the film to be such an success; and the fact that it was such a success proves that these viral campaigns were essential to create word of mouth over the internet, at schools, colleges, universities etc. and even at work. The Facebook page for film has over 700,000 fans already, and even more on Twitter and mySpace.

Youtube was one of the biggest contributers to the marketing campaign created, with the initial trailer for the film alone having over 8 million views so far, a huge number of people that the campaign is targeting to go and watch the film This also allowed the audience to rate the trailer and leave comments, which could be useful research towards any other marketing ventures they decide to embark on such as another trailer.

TV Spot - This was also a huge advertising campaign, with it showing a very short teaser and the minute long teaser. These were perhaps the most successful at attracting the audience as they appeared on during peak times which was very expensive but got across the film to more people. They also appeared mostly on channels like e4 that is watched regularly by young people, therefore not wasting their advertising on people that wont want to watch the film.

Avatar Game - The film also had a game for it that was advertised at the same time so that it could be released when there is the most interest in the film and teenagers want to buy the game. The game itself had its own trailer too, another way in the film was reaching out into other platforms by achieving a game for games console and also for the Apple iPod touch or iPhone.

This all shows how 20th Century Fox covered all the platforms and advertised the film like no other before, in so many different ways and on such a huge scale, which is the reason for the films success and record breaking billion dollar revenue in just 17 days. The $150 million used were put to good use in the marketing campaign, as we can see all around us.