Marketers have a new and powerful tool at their disposal for movie marketing. For decades, studios have combined traditional marketing techniques with simple Web games to reach niche audiences, but these days these simple web games have been transformed into sophisticated, multi-episode games that hope to mimic the viral success of games like Mafia Wars on Facebook. The goal, like every marketing campaign, is to increase ticket sales by increasing awareness, excitement and moviegoer connections with the movie prior to its release.
One such campaign, described in the recent New York Times article, Using Online Games to Get Movie Audiences Involved, was created by Sony Pictures to promote the new Angelina Jolie action-thriller, Salt. The game is called Day X Exists, is a series of episodes that reveal information about the movie and its central character, Evelyn Salt, each week.
These games are not to be confused with retail games such as Goonies 2, that are released for popular gaming platforms such as Nintendo and PSIII. Marketing-driven games are free and tend to disappear after the movie leaves theaters.
This type of marketing suffers from a number of challenges however. First of all, it is difficult to quantify the exact effect on ticket sales. Successful games can get between 1 and 10 million plays, but it is unknown how this translates into sales. Games must also be designed to be complex enough to attract serious gamers but simple enough that the average moviegoer can play. Additionally, games must be designed to feel like actual games and not marketing tools. Overall, the growth in online gaming and social networking support the belief that this will be an increasingly important movie marketing tool in the future.
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