Viral marketing

For my film, I hope to utilise a viral marketing campaign to 'get in touch' with my younger audience who are more in tune with technology therefore will be more likely to be effected by a viral campaign. Viral campaigns use marketing techniques that utilise pre-existing social networking technologies to gain an increase in brand awareness. It's often spread by word of mouth or through viral effects of the Internet and mobile networks. Viral advertising often does not mean businesses pays for its distribution. Most viral advertisement are paid by a sponsor company, launched either on their own platform (company webpage or social media profile) or on social media websites such as YouTube.   

Case study: The Hunger Games Mockingjay part 1:
The viral marketing campaign began in June, 2014 with the reinstatement of TheCapitol.PN a "government" website for Panem which was used throughout the promotion for the previous two films, this creates a virtual realism experience for the audience as if the Hunger Games world really exists. 

Also, in conjunction with Yahoo and Tumblr, they released the 'District Heroes Collection' which featured several character posters representing seven of the thirteen districts in Panem. Also, the website opened registrations for "citizens of Panem" to register with their email to receive updates for Capitol TV, this therefore creates active audience participation to get involved with the marketing of the film.

The marketing company released a series of 'propaganda videos' to again create a sense of realism, in June 25, TheCapitol.PN site released a video titled "President Snow's Address - 'Together As One'" featuring a speech by Donald Sutherland, in character as President Snow addressing the citizens of Panem. The video went viral on YouTube
Two weeks later on July 9, Capitol TV released a second viral video titled 'President Snow's Address - Unity' featuring another speech by President Snow with Peeta Mellark standing beside him, but this time accompanied by Jena Malone in character as Johanna Mason. The speech, however, was interrupted by Jeffrey Wright, in character as Beetee Latier, a technician from District 13, to announce that "the Mockingjay lives. This was part of the teaser process for the film as a small part of the films plot was released, this was designed to build up extensive hype, also "Within minutes, #TheMockingjayLives and '#2 - Unity' became the top two trending topics worldwide on Twitter.




Shortly before the trailer's official release, a teaser poster for the movie was posted on The Capitol's Instagram account, but was soon quickly deleted. Shortly after the removal of the poster, the account issued an apology " for the technical issues", presenting the poster's posting as a hack from the District 13 rebellions, this would obviously create extensive hype as people who are fans of the books and films will share the trailer with others.

 
On July 28, the teaser trailer officially debuted online through the film's official Facebook page and YouTube account, soon after the film was trending worldwide as views of the video soared. This shows a clever way of making use of social network sites to market a film, the use of these sites has a multiplier effect in the sense that the audience can market the film themselves through sharing the links.

 

The website introduced new posters for the District 13 characters including Beetee, Coin, Plutarch, Finnick, Haymitch and Effie, and then a series of posters featuring Gale, Katniss, Cressida, Boggs, Pollux and the rest of the 'film crew' in the film. This series of character posters creates an individual portrayal of each character, and represents them in key with the location in which they belong.