Cross Media Convergence and Synergy are vital processes in the successful marketing of a media product to audiences. To what extent do you agree in relation to you case studies?

We are living in a society where technology is all around us. This has increased the potential for more companies to work together to help make a film successful. In this response I will argue that cross media convergence and synergy are a vital process in the marketing of films as they help to market and distribute films more directly. However, synergy and cross-media convergence are used in different ways depending on the budget of a film.

Warner Bros. Pictures is one of the 6 major conglomerates in the USA with many subsidiary companies such as Warner Bros Studios. This means they set high budgets for each film and therefore they are able to use the use of synergy and convergence in a number of ways.

‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (2012) was filmed with IMAX cameras for 72 minutes of the film. Christopher Nolan doesn’t believe in the idea of 3D. However he wanted his films to be of a high quality. This highlights the increase of IMAX as in ‘The Dark Knight’ there was also a scene shot in IMAX. In January 2012, six months prior to the film's release, tickets for midnight IMAX showings in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles went on sale and sold out immediately.

More and more films are being marketed on the internet and through mobile phones with Apps. The official website for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ was released in May 2011. The website introduced a viral marketing campaign which was similar to Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight’. The website also revealed the first official image of ‘Bane’; this highlighted the use of New Media Technology.

The social networking site ‘Twitter’ was created where the target audience created a hashtag for the film ‘TheFireRises’, this allowed the film to get more noticed and well known to the audience.

As Warner Bros. Pictures set a high budget for the film, they were able to distribute the film to their target audience in a number of different ways. When the teaser trailer was released, they had competition with ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2’, which was also a big success in the box office. The theatrical trailer was released with ‘Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows’. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ was shown again with the release of ‘The Avengers’. Warner Bros released many different types of trailers which advertised to the audience the new release of the film where the audience where then reminded about the tickets are now on sale.

The interaction between Warner Bros. Pictures and the American international Toy Fair, Mattel unveiled figures of Batman, Bane and Catwoman. This ensured that the film was being marketed correctly to its target audience. This is beneficial for each company through efficiencies in expertise and costs. Warner Bros also partnered with Mountain Dew to do a cross promotion that included a special paint scheme on the No. 88 Chevrolet Impala owned by Earnhardt, Jr in the NASCAR sprint cup series. In July 4, 2012, Warner Bros. Studio signed a deal with Formula One team Lotus F1 to have the films logo appear on the Lotus E20s. Similarly, Warner Bros had done a similar promotion in 2088 British Grand Prix, when promoting ‘The Dark Knight’.

However when distributing and marketing ‘The Inbetweeners’ box set of the series 1,2 and 3 to help them purchase the Samsung Galaxy Ace mobile at Phones 4 U stores, but also to celebrate the release of the new ‘Inbetweeners’ film.

They  used the cross-media publicity to get their target audience attention to remind them about the new release by going to talk to ‘Absolute Radio. For people who missed this on the radio they had an opportunity to download it on iTunes and subscribe to Podcasts.

Another way in which they marketed their film was by placing an advertisement on ‘The Nations Noodle’ box. They also released a Year Book and started a completion for their target audience.

Due to them being an independent they didn’t have a lot of money to spend on advertising. Therefore they set up a Facebook and Twitter account where members from the movie spoke to their target audience. The E4 website released the official trailer for ‘The Inbetweeners Movie’.

In today’s society we no longer need to buy DVDs as we can download them online or watch them on YouTube. Blu-Ray DVDs carry more features than the original DVD and it can be played on HD TV. The Inbetweeners Movie was released on Blu-Ray which included features and an extended cut of the glim that restores approximately 4 minutes of material omitted from the theatrical release. You could also rent the film on 4OD and on LOVEFiLM. There was a prediction that the release of the DVD for ‘The Inbetweeners Movie’ was going to be successful due to the success in the series of The Inbetweeners, this gave an advantage for the company as they knew that their target audience was going to be interested in this new release.

In conclusion depending on which type of company is producing the film, for example an independent or major company, the budge of the film will be different. The independent will have a low budget and the major will have a high budget. This will vary on how successful each film will be due to the amount of money spent on marketing the product.