Week 6 EOC: Movie Promotion

May 13 2013 is supposed to be the official release date of another great post-apocalyptic epic featuring Will Smith, with his son Jaden Smith tagging along.  “After Earth” was written by Will Smith, the screenplay was written by Gary Whitta, and is directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The later having catastrophic features in presentations, however the screenplay is G. Whitta’s own, plus an actor of such trajectory such as Will Smith can overturn any impending negativity.

As the promoter I do not wish to simply dump the movie and expect it to be the next big hit. Instead I would raid the airwaves, specially the Internet, and any possible interactive content by saturating them with very cryptic images and archaic soundtracks to have the people guessing until they are sitting down in the movie theater.

“The effectiveness of traditional mass media remains very important, but its dominance is declining. In its place, advertisers are now adding a broad selection of more-specialized and highly targeted media to reach smaller customer segments with more-personalized, interactive messages. The new media range from specialty cable television channels and made-for-the-Web videos to Internet catalogs, e-mail, blogs, cell phone content, and online social networks. In all, companies are doing less broadcasting and more narrowcasting.”

The targeted market is going to be young adults, the hardest age group to reach because of the increasingly surprising attention deficit; therefore, unless something keeps reinventing itself, it will pass by as “forgettable”. Millennials. (also called Generation Y or the echo boomers).  They number 83 million, dwarfing the Gen Xers and larger even than the baby boomer segment. This group includes several age cohorts: tweens (aged 9–12), teens (13–18), and young adults (19–32). Part of this reasoning comes from most of the big hits nowadays being rated PG-13.
 

After the mystery has been engraved, I would have spots in all major scientific and sci/fi networks, web sites, and even radio showcasing look-alikes of the best-known news channels re-enacting the prelude to the film and/or the end of humanity, as we know it. At the same time and in the same manner I would have presidential press conference’s showing a look-alike enacting an embracing crisis time and an impending doom. “The American marketing system has been accused of adding to several “evils” in American society at large. Advertising has been a special target—so much so that the American Association of Advertising Agencies once launched a campaign to defend advertising against what it felt to be common but untrue criticisms”.