Advertising and marketing, news and publicity are all professional disciplines, and they involve a wide range of professional fields. Even if you study a doctoral program, you may not be called an expert, because the influencing factors in the practice process are too complex and must be analyzed based on individual cases.

The industrial chain of Hollywood commercial films has gradually developed and matured, and the publicity system has also taken shape. But why are some works so popular, while others fail? Of course, the quality of the works themselves is the top priority, but are there any other reasons besides that?

The most intuitive case comparison is that both works of "Troy" in 2004 and "Celestial Dynasty" in 2005 are epic masterpieces, and they are also led by top superstars. The former cost 175 million yuan, and the latter cost 130 million yuan. Both can be regarded as high investments, ambitious, and all the means of publicity in the stage of publicity were vigorous, but after the release, they both suffered a crushing defeat, but the result is quite interesting. The "Troy" with only 56 points in the media's box office was 116 million yuan, while the media's "Celestial Dynasty" with only 47 million yuan in the North American box office was 63 points.

Of course, it is not that there is a huge difference between fifty-six and sixty-three points, but it is undeniable that the media reputation of the "Celestial Dynasty" is better than that of "Troy", but the North American box office of the two sides is really one world, and the huge gap is unbelievable. In other words, the quality of the work is indeed linked to the box office, but it is not 100% proportional, which means that the impact of publicity and marketing on the box office of commercial movies cannot be ignored.

But why did the "Troy" and "Saharan Cavalry" almost bring publicity to the extreme, but still suffer from a collapsed defeat?

Lance is not a professional background, so he naturally cannot answer it. But in his opinion, not only with the quality of the work, but also the publicity method and the content of the publicity are also crucial.

For example, the focus of the promotion of "Troy" is Brad Pitt. When the audience enters, they naturally want to watch Brad, but they find that Brad's role is not only thin, but also all the heroic lights are snatched away by Hector. Although he is a supporting role, people can't like it at all. Naturally, they shout that they are cheating.

For example, the focus of the promotion of the "Saharan Cavalry" is the love sparks of Matthew McConaughey and Penelope Cruz. The audience naturally expects the chemical reaction between the two, but not to mention the dust in the movie, Penelope's scenes in the movie are pitifully few. Most of the time they spend watching Matthew behave as a hero alone. There are almost no interactive scenes between the two except for a few heroes to save the beauty, so that the endings seem inexplicable and confusing.

Of course, this does not mean that the audience will promote whatever they want to see, "Avatar" promotes visual effects, and "Troy" promotes how brave Hector is. Promotion has never been so simple. First, some things may not attract the attention of the audience even if they are promoted; second, the balance between publicity and spoilers must be grasped, and it is crucial to carry out publicity without revealing the exciting parts of the movie. But to say at least, during the publicity process, the film company needs to guide the audience's expectations to the right path.

During the "After Day" publicity period, in addition to visual effects, the keyword "Go Home" permeates through it and awakens people's emotional resonance; during the "City of Sin" publicity period, artistic resonance is the core of the entire publicity strategy, which not only helps people understand Lance's creative intentions, but also supplements various characters, which plays an auxiliary role in watching the movie.

In the last life, "Mad Max 4" was praised by many people, from critics to audiences, but the box office was far from expectations. Why? This question plagued almost every industry insider. Later, "the style of the work is too cult" became a common reason, but in Lance's view, "Batman Prequel: The Dark Knight" can also be regarded as an alternative cult movie, but it has created an insurmountable monument in the history of comic-adapted movies - including box office, reputation and awards. So why can't "Mad Max 4"?

Perhaps, changing the promotional method and content would be a good attempt.

In Lance's memory, the promotional focus of "Crazy Max 4" always focuses on two parts. One is the cast led by Tom Hardy, Charlize Theron and Nicholas Holt, emphasizing the star effect; the part is the live special effects, emphasizing the visual feast.

This kind of publicity method is not wrong, but there is nothing new. It is basically the same as the promotional methods of all summer commercial blockbusters. In the atmosphere of blockbusters and fatigue bombing, it is really difficult to break through. More importantly, the setting of the wasteland world and the rich cult style in the movie are not mentioned during the publicity process. On the surface, it seems to be to avoid the loss of ordinary audiences, but it also misses the opportunity to awaken the audience's interest in advance.

In this regard, "City of Sin" is the best example of success.

Therefore, Lance plans to take a detour this time and let the audience appreciate the charm of the movie "Raging Road" in an alternative way. While avoiding the leak of exciting clips in advance, he can also present the grand setting of the wasteland world to the audience, making ordinary audiences interested, and even the urge to enter the cinema.

In the past two months, the action of publishing a car information every week has continued, which has awakened the interest of car enthusiasts in this movie - this is a gold mine. Almost every man has an indescribable preference for cars to a greater or lesser extent, not to mention that this is the United States, and the United States where everyone has two cars on average. Awakening these enthusiasts is basically equivalent to awakening the main box office force of the summer season.

Lance intends to continue this strategy and take a step closer.

After James Corden hung up the phone, he sat in a chair with his right hand on his chin. The shock in his eyes still could not dissipate for a long time. Although he had heard of Lance's reputation for a long time - now the six major Hollywood film companies have arranged special network teams in the publicity department, only after he actually cooperated with Lance, did he realize that Lance was leading more than one of the six major film companies, far more than that.

Even if James recalled Lance's proposal just now, he still felt incredible. How many wonderful ideas were there in Lance's head? After filming one amazing masterpiece after another, he could come up with such a promotional plan! Now James is beginning to wonder whether Lance's promotional plan is effective and what kind of response it can bring if it is effective!

Viral video.

This is the strategy proposed by Lance. The so-called viral video is to use emails, video blogs and other video hosting websites to spread video clips on the Internet, and rely on users' spontaneous word-of-mouth publicity to expand the area. Since the publicity principle is similar to the spread of viruses, it is called viral marketing in economics, which is a very effective method in online marketing.

This concept of viral marketing was proposed as early as 1997, but in 2006, it was far from expanding. It was the first time James heard this term, and Lance had to spend some verbal explanations on the principle of this publicity.

Lance's idea is to make a series of viral videos, mainly looking at the quality of the videos produced, ranging from three to six or seven. Then, through the spread of viral videos, the style of the Wasteland Doomsday will be initially spread, and then the crew will build the world view of the movie, and then combine it with the car publicity that has received enthusiastic resounding so far, so that people can truly accept the fictional world of "Mad Max 4".

Although what impresses the audience most is the adrenaline burst chase scenes and the visual effects of bursts, Lance does not intend to announce these early, but leaves them as surprises for the audience to go to the cinema to dig. Relance hopes to cultivate a group of loyal audiences who are deeply interested in the culture of the wasteland world like "Star Wars", and at the same time, it is combined with pop culture to truly radiate a strong influence, allowing the audience to spontaneously enter the cinema to discover surprises - this publicity method is similar to "Star Wars 7".

"City of Sin" set up a website to share photos and videos, which can also be considered a form of virus propaganda, but it focuses more on netizens' sense of participation. This time, Lance focuses more on dissemination, and achieves the purpose of information exchange through widespread dissemination.

More importantly, the promotional strategy of viral videos almost does not cost Chaos Pictures any cost. According to Lance's plan, the production cost of a viral video is between 10,000 and 30,000 US dollars, which is too expensive to exceed this range. This also means that they only need to allocate less than 100,000 US dollars to complete the second wave of publicity of the movie. Even if the publicity effect cannot meet expectations, they will have almost no losses. This is really...it is really too good and cheap. Compared with the early publicity budget of "Superman Returns" that has exceeded 20 million, it is simply the gap between beggars and kings.

James quickly retracted his chaotic thoughts and adjusted his breathing. Now is not the time to be excited. Although the viral video is cheap, the production content is absolutely careless. After the video is produced, Lance still needs to review and make a decision before it can be promoted. His top priority now is to prepare a small team to produce the viral video. But... how to make this viral video?
Chapter completed!