On March 15th 2016, 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' was released in theatres worldwide. In a mere two weeks, the film already doubled its budget of $250 million. From their budget, the studio spent a hefty $165 million on marketing alone. How much of this was executed via social media? And how successful was it?. These are two questions I will be answering and examining in this post.
Warner Bros.'s main social media marketing campaign for Batman v Superman resided with the likes of Snapchat, costing them roughly $3 million for four days. Warner Bros. were unorthodox in their approach regarding Snapchat; the fastest growing social networking platform as of 2016. Instead of marketing their product through the designated 'stories' available for Snapchatters to view, Warner Bros. established their presence on the app's main feature by programming and creating custom filters for Snapchat to enjoy.
Briefly, this allowed Snapchatters to distort images and videos of themselves or others with animations promoting the film. Although this doesn't seem so extravagant, Snapchatters across the globe immediately began engaging with the filters, and even posted the results to other social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and many more.
Briefly, this allowed Snapchatters to distort images and videos of themselves or others with animations promoting the film. Although this doesn't seem so extravagant, Snapchatters across the globe immediately began engaging with the filters, and even posted the results to other social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and many more.
  Ultimately, this acted as a ripple effect of social media marketing for Warner Bros. as they had - without paying for it - obtained a viral presence amongst various networking platforms. Involving the target audience through an interactive activity rather than traditionally presenting the information to the viewer to watch at their own will proved to be successful in regards to the marketing campaign's reach of audience. The campaign was in fact so successful that other film studios were quick to jump on the bandwagon. Warner Bros. were not hesitant to grasp the full advantages of their entrepreneurial marketing campaign. The film studio were quick to line up two other films for the same social media marketing approach, including 'How to be Single' and 'Suicide Squad'. How to be single has nearly tripled its original budget of $38 million, and Suicide Squad is yet to be released.Snapchat only released the filter function late last year, and Warner Bros. were quick to turn the feature in their favour, and in doing so have opened a new door in the world of social media marketing for future firms to take advantage of. |
