Alyssa Arminio
Audience Research
Blog Summary PaperApril 11, 2008
Blog Summary Paper

11 weeks ago, I was pretty naive when it came to blogging. Sure, I had heard about the growing popularity of these “online journals”, but I thought it was something strictly created for technological people who spent the majority of their time online. After completing the semester long assignment for Audience Research, and creating my very own blog about Movie Marketing Tactics, I have learned that I didn’t know the first thing about blogging.

Starting this project, I didn’t know exactly what a blog was. I thought that they were diaries for people who were too lazy to hand write. I have now learned that it is, in fact, an online journal, but it can be used to serve many purposes. People keep blogs regarding their personal lives, their field of business, their hobbies, technological information or even strong opinions they might feel towards a certain topic. I never realized that there were blogs on virtually every topic imaginable! I didn’t get the opportunity to branch out and explore each field, but I did come across several well-established blogs in the marketing industry alone. I can only imagine the endless amounts that exist on the Internet.

Through this class, I discovered that blogs are a great source of information and a good tool for obtaining research, especially when you are looking for personal opinions. I’ve learned quick ways to access blogs, how to create my own for free and what separates a “good blog” from a “bad blog”. It’s crazy to think, but some people base their professions around this information sharing technique! Something I found extremely interesting was the way in which these bloggers interact with other users. They leave comments, promote other sites and share media such as links and images. Some are also sponsored on, turning blogging into a new form of earning revenue.

As I mentioned before, I spent the semester researching and blogging on Movie Marketing. Looking back over the twenty posts I created, there are some definite “big themes” I can see present in my work. The first recurring theme I kept stumbling across was the idea of using an interactive campaign. From what I read and researched, they have proven to be wildly successful with audiences. One example directly from my blog is the tactics from ‘The Dark Knight’ campaign. One technique involved them reaching out to college campuses to “recruit” members to support the fake election of Harvey Dent, a character from the movie. In a completely opposite approach, the movie ‘Prom Night’ decided to interact with their target audiences in a more “hands-on” way. They hired employees to stand behind cardboard standees and jump out at passerby’s, intending to scare them.

Another big theme I noticed was that advertisers are in constant competition to create the biggest buzz in the industry. They attempt to do so by trying marketing ploys that have not yet been tested. The team behind Dr. Seuss’s ‘Horton Hears A Who’ teamed up with IHOP to create breakfast dishes that were named and created based completely on the storyline. The ‘Hannah Montana’ movie tried to stir excitement by making their theater experience completely 3-D. Traditional movies and marketing approaches are a thing of the past, and advertising that creates word-of-mouth praise is here to stay.

The idea of creating a shock factor was another recurring theme. Catching your audience’s attention in a way that they would never expect has proven to be effective in terms of advertising. To promote ‘Untraceable’, marketers set up an actual website with the URL KillWithMe.com, which is the site that the movie is based around. In the movie, the site shows graphic, live footage of people being tortured and killed, scaring people into thinking that the actual website will contain the same thing. (It doesn’t, obviously.) The movie titled ‘The Happening’ attempted to create shock with a series of graphic and horrifying trailers released nation-wide. The trailers were soon released because they were just “too shocking” for public eyes.

One theme that was evident to me even before this semester assignment was that big names will create big stories. In January, I blogged about the death of Heath Ledger, and the impact his death could have potentially had on the ‘The Dark Knight’s’ campaign. It was easy to find information on this because nearly every entertainment source was discussing this topic that particular week. People thrive to seek out these stories surrounding big celebrities. At the end of the semester, I wrote a blog about another big-named celebrity, Daniel Radcliffe, planning to grace the stage of Broadway, naked. While he is not the first actor to ever appear onstage nude, it is certainly evident that he might be one of the most anticipated.

Lastly, the idea of partnerships and sponsorships was certainly something I encountered while researching on several occasions. The ‘Sex and the City’ movie has already created sponsorships with Skyy Vodka and Houlihans to promote their upcoming project, quite obviously keeping their very specific target audience in mind. ‘Horton Hears a Who’ paired up with American Idol at one point and used their top rated program to plug in trailers and visuals from the animated movie. One trend that certainly abides by this big theme is the idea of partnering with the social networking device Facebook. Facebook allows trailers to be uploaded and shared among friends, while also giving marketers the chance to add their own, specialized applications, much as ‘Indiana Jones’ did when they established the “super-poke”.

Creating and maintaining this blog not only gave me an opportunity to research the field of marketing more in-depth, it helped me track developments in specific campaigns over the course of the semester. I blogged about ‘The Dark Knight’ on at least 3 different occasions, as they continued to create expand their promotions. I also blogged more than once about ‘Horton Hears a Who’ as they experimented with new ways to interact with their target audience.

Even with all of the research I put into this assignment, I still wouldn’t call myself a “pro” in the world of Movie Marketing. However, I did get a much better feel of what is going on today in this field. New and innovative ideas are being tested every day. Successful ones are then being altered and copied repeatedly. Research is constantly being done to develop new media outlets to market through, whether they are online, partnerships, sponsorships or simply unique and interactive. One thing I have definitely noticed is that advertising is becoming a lot less straight forward. Sometimes, the intention of a campaign is not obvious at first glance. Marketers want to leave you curious, urging you to investigate further and learn more for yourself. They are very careful not to give away too much information, because that’s been proven to turn audiences today away.

This project fits in with the Audience Research course because it reaffirms the trends we have studied, proving to us what audiences today are interested in and influenced by. The presentations we did in class about the pros and cons of specific types of marketing related well to the topic of Movie Marketing, because I found myself picking apart specific campaigns, and thinking of different media outlets they could have used to make their promotions stronger. Though I don’t know if this project really prepared me for any job I plan to have in the future, it definitely helped raise my awareness of a trend which I’m sure I will encounter again professionally. Though I don’t know if I could ever find the patience to keep my own blog, I know that I will turn to them in the future for information, research and the opinion of others.