A Tale of Two Trailers - Part Two; Endgame and it's Marketing Minefield

It seems like years ago since audiences sat and watched their beloved favourite superheros turn to dust on the big screen. But it was only earlier this year, April in fact, since fans were left feeling miserable about the fate of the Avengers - and since this fatal event fans have been awaiting news on the sequel. On Friday the 7th of December fans were treated, after days of rumours regarding its release, to the trailer for Avengers 4 titled Endgame;

Endgame raises several concerns about marketing, how on earth was it going to release a trailer without ruining the plot to the next one? Would it even be worth releasing a trailer as the hype around the film was more than enough, Marvel could of took a massive risk and not released any information about the film and left it until the premiere. Fans are that desperate for the next instalment and were in disbelief that a trailer would ever arrive. One fan was so fed up with the teases that they posted the following statement on Reddit;

Fed up Marvel Fans

Marvel did release the trailer and it took the internet by storm, it is now predicted to rake in a huge two billion at the box office , smashing the 24 hour views record reaching an impressive 289 million fans. These views were totalled up from views on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. 

Marvel Thanking It's Fans

So it was worth putting out a trailer as it took the world by storm, but what did it reveal ? Well it didn't really reveal anything at all. The trailer spent the majority of the time reeling over the events of Infinity War the earthbound heroes mope around and Tony Stark is about to die in space due to lack of resources. In a post credit like scene Scott Lang appears, despite being last seen stuck in the Quantum realm in Ant Man and The Wasp, with a glimmer of hope and wit. 

Marvel has developed a very good marketing strategy and breaks records every time but there are serious concerns leading into the future. I manged to speak to Adrian Perez an ex-Supervisor of Regional Marketing Operations & Asset Management, TWDC EMEA/UK (2017-2018) for Disney UK. Whilst he doesn't speak on the behalf of Marvel Studios we engaged in a very interesting discussion about Marvels marketing approach. The questions were sent on the 7th of December before the trailer was released, but answered the day after the trailer came out. Check out the interview, in the format of Q and A below;

1. With the Marvel Universe being heavily reliant on transmedia storytelling (I.E Marvels reliance on it’s all connected), does it become harder to begin marketing campaigns for the bigger scale films. For instance, the Avengers films, notably Avengers 4 whose trailer is rumoured to be released tomorrow. 

I would say it actually becomes significantly easier from a marketing standpoint, our industry has never been so saturated with content, so already having loyal fans engaged in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) conversations makes it easier to market for it, as the fans are doing the promoting for you + starting the conversation for you. I would say dropping the trailer online for Avengers 4 requires zero paid media budget, you don’t have to direct anyone to watch the trailer, fans are eagerly waiting for just the trailer to drop as much as the movie itself. The trailer which you speak of hit 50M views in just 1 day breaking YouTube records.

If anything from a marketing budget pov, a good strategy would be to optimize your paid-media budget by being selective and targeting demographics outside of MCU’s standard target audience, in the hope of attracting strangers and converting them into customers/promoters. But returning to my first point, transmedia storytelling, if done successfully, will convert your customers into promoters, and that is a vital strategy in an industry saturated with content and customers having so much breadth of choice.

2. Carrying on with that notion, do you see it as a purposeful decision to release the second Captain Marvel trailer, Avengers 4 and Spider-Man Far from Home trailer in the same week. As Spider-Man is the next film after Avengers 4, which must mean he survives the events of Infinity War despite turning to dust. 

It’s certainly a strategy, marketing for movies that are at different points in their timeline around the same time only creates even more speculation for the fans; ‘how does Spider-Man survive?’ ‘how can he possibly?’. The first rule of marketing is understand what audiences want, and MCU fans everywhere want answers, and they want them now. So if that’s what they want, that’s when you can be ingenious with your marketing strategy and tease, hint clues, mislead, create diversions and confusions about the fate of the characters and so on.

3. How long in advance do the campaigns begin to come together as Marvel has a strong sense of having films in phases. With only loose details of Phase 4, there must be plans for future films (which I know you can’t talk about due to NDA’s!) in the pipeline. 

The US/regional marketing team(s) are briefed on each new MCU entry around 15 months in advance, we tend to receive a no-fly list (list of spoilers to not reveal in the marketing campaign(s)) and then have to be very careful in our internal communications to all international teams to not leak out any spoilers in our own local cuts of external-facing promotional material. You’ve got to remember Walt Disney Studios is separate to Marvel Studios, so both entities/teams have to work together with as much time as possible to allow for stakeholder approvals before anything is released.

4. Now that the major heroes have already been covered in the cinematic universe, does it become harder trying to sell the more unknown characters to audiences. For instance, the first Guardians of the Galaxy was a massive risk as barely anyone knew about them but now the team is a household name. As I recall you mentioned Groot USB’s for a marketing campaign. How do you go about making a campaign for these lesser known properties? Marvel keeps discussing The Eternals at the minute and I know for a fact I barely know anything about it.

The key is to stagger new characters over time, you’ll realise the GOTG, Black Panther, Doctor Stranger + Spider-Man are all fairly new characters but have great affinity (especially Spider-Man who is an all-time favourite). I think the ultimate strategy which Marvel Studios have been very clever with, has been to turn these more new characters into dust in Infinity War. Like the saying ‘ you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’, this was the cleverest trick from the Studio to create that ultimate affinity from fans. Bringing them back (if Avengers 4 brings them all back) will be the ultimate testament as to how you establish new beloved characters to take the MCU torch into the future. But of course, we don’t know what future phases bring. With Disney having bought Fox and now having rights to the X-Men IP, who’s to say we’re not going to see Iron Man and Wolverine in the same shot in the not too long future, reprised by new movie stars.

5. With streaming services becoming more and more competitive, can you see production on the TV shows coming to a halt, so Marvel can keep productions in house. I ask this due to the recent cancellation of Marvels Netflix shows, with only Jessica Jones and The Punisher remaining. Could Agents of Shield and Marvels; The Runaways also face the axe as Disney + launches. Or do you see the shows returning under the Disney + brand?

If anything I remember Bob Iger saying IN a public statement how the long-term strategy is to have all of Disney’s productions sit underneath Disney+, which is an interesting strategy in itself, as you’re closing yourself off from other platforms/audiences to expose your content to. I guess we’ll have to wait and see if Disney+ can penetrate the market which Netflix has already colonised vastly.

6. I remember reading an article a while back that stated Cinema adverts are made to be longer and more complex as the audience retention is stronger due to no distractions. In this sense does Marvel change the way it advertises the trailers? There is a strong sense of community online when a new Marvel trailer drops but there doesn’t seem to be any focus on exclusive trailers in the cinemas anymore. Would you say the internet is more of a priority for marketing as the world continues to become more and more mobile?

From an in-house pov, we haven’t had any research come our way that trailers should differ significantly across theatrical/online. I would say in our day and age trailers have become an online phenomenon, fans eagerly wait for the release of a trailer as much as the theatrical release of a movie. It’s exciting and a testament to succeeding franchises + transmedia storytelling.

7. In terms of audience markets, does the content of the trailers and marketing change much? China is famous for having different film posters, but does it change between America and Europe for example? 

 Yes the marketing can be tweaked ever so slightly on a local level due to audience insights very specific to that country or region. Cultural guidelines are also very important. You also have to remember that there are creative teams all over the world who probably want to do some refinement to promotional content to make the content feel more topical. I remember here in the UK this summer when The Meg came out and roared at the box office, the UK marketing team decided to create some TV spots to surf that wave for Ant-Man & the Wasp, creating a specific TV spot that made fun of ‘something large coming out of the water this summer’, with then supersized Ant-Man coming out of the water ‘instead of the Meg’. It’s a topical way to surf the wave as such. It’s clever.

8. Finally, we know a trailer is coming for Avengers 4. Do you think the marketing would be more successful if a trailer wasn’t going to be released? There is a huge traction online already for the upcoming film and everyone is still talking about the films events. Would that be too much of a risk?

I think here the key is ‘less is more’, some of the best trailers in movie marketing history tell very little about the story is about, in the case of the MCU some of the core strategies are going to have to be misleading fans, teasing the fate of the characters and using their own fan theories against them. In the Infinity War trailers Captain America’s + Iron Man’s deaths were hinted but here we are. I’m not part of the team responsible for the Avengers 4 marketing but I sure am curious to see how their strategy is going to map out. For their first key beat they’ve tackled the emotional resonance Thanos’ global 50% wipe out had + the appearance of 2 key characters we missed in Infinity War. They’re realising little nuggets and clues over time.

INTERVIEW CONCLUDED 

With two trailers down and only one to go for 2018, Marvel is about to sail into a successful 2019. Once the Spider-Man trailer is out you may here from me again if it has anything substantial to say about the industry, if not you'll here from me next year as Disney comes closer to officially merging with Fox.