The suicide squad. How was the world premiere prepared?

How the film broke all records for the charges in the first days of hire? Why so many claims to the film after the premiere? Puzzled by these questions, a friendly team, we sat down to study the PR campaign of the sensational film "Suicide Squad."



Why promote a movie? It would seem that a great expensive product, star actors, a strong franchise with "crowds of fans" in many countries. But such films are especially large-scale promotion. And all because you need to return the investment.

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One may ask, what is the practical use of our research? To understand the mechanism for promoting a media product on the world or Russian market, it is best to disassemble the largest and most expensive project, because such projects do not save resources and use almost all PR and advertising tools to achieve their goals. Our research aims to demonstrate these tools of advancement. If you will be promoting a media project with fewer resources or a narrower geography, you can select the most suitable tools and focus on them all the available resources.



When analyzing such a large advertising and PR campaign, preparation during the whole year, starting from July 2015, and an incredible informational pressure 2 weeks before the premiere can be easily seen.



The article includes 5 sections that cover the main channels of film promotion, criticism and conclusions.

1. PR campaign of the film

A map of world media outlets is provided in the file, on page 1. A map of outputs in Russia is shown on page 2. The analysis file is shared :







Three main periods of activity of the PR-department of the Warner Bros studio studio are clearly traced: July 2015, January 2016 and July 2016. Such an exit scheme was chosen in order to gradually increase interest in the film.



There were a lot of exits in the world media during the year and all key world media were covered. Comparing the suicide squad's exit map with the Pokemon Go exit map (see analytic article on the game's PR campaign ), we can state that the film was covered more actively than the game. But the budgets are incomparable: Pokemon Go announced raising $ 35 million for development, and the budget of the “Suicide squad” $ 175 million.

“The experience of the film industry well illustrates the effectiveness of PR in promoting a product and creating the necessary public opinion.



First, the film’s budget of $ 175 million does not relax and dictates a comparable budget for promo, advertising and PR of the film.



Secondly, you need to understand the difference in advertising and PR channels of communication. If in advertising the main money goes to pay for advertising and providing the required number of contacts. So in the case of PR, the money goes to hiring a good press agent and providing communication. For example, if we want to receive an article criticizing a good publication on time, we need to find a way to organize a pre-order or even a press tour to the location. It should be understood that authoritative publications do not allow the “purchase” of necessary articles in their editorial policy. If you want advertising space - buy advertising space, your text or layout will be placed in the "advertising" section. If you want an editorial, give the information, and the publication decides for itself what to publish. "Jeans" in The Washington Post or the Guardian is impossible.



Thirdly, in the scheme of promotion of the wave of advertising and PR occupy their specific place. In the case of the "Suicide Squad" it is clearly seen on the basis of the analysis of the media and YouTube. The end of January 2016 is the main wave of publications that form the expectation of the film. April - careful stuffing through informal channels of video and music associated with the film. June and July are two waves of the film’s own advertising. And finally, the first week of August - the main shaft of reviews and reviews related directly to the release of the film.



The Russian audience must be sickened by the thesis that “Jeans” is impossible in the media, and every second PR-specialist will argue that he will achieve any publication even in the most authoritative publication. However, it is not. Buy a journalist is not possible. For this, there is a PR department, the key work of which is to build relationships with journalists, and most importantly, with editors. This is a delicate and delicate work, built on human relations, but it also does not do without the influence of finance. If the corporation (in particular, Warner Bros) for the media is one of the key advertisers that buys, for example, $ 5 million a year, various advertising tools - from regular banners to special projects on the portal, then it is obvious that press releases from this Corporations immediately get to the editor on the table, he carefully reads them and, if there are no objections, then he immediately “puts it into motion.”

The essence of news articles, which mainly use the same photos and insert video trailers:

1. Out trailer. We answer the question why this film promises to be successful?
2. Consideration of the originality of the film’s idea that “villains save the world” and the presentation of the film’s characters.
3. Anticipation that the film will beat all records for the charges in the first week.
4. The statement that the film "set a record for fees in Russia / the world."
5. Journalistic film review, 0-2 days after the premiere.
6. Interview with the director, actors.

2. Video promotion

One of the key channels of film promotion among potential viewers is the YouTube video platform. She is the leader among all platforms in terms of coverage and viewing of videos in the world. For the "Suicide Squad" were created first-class, bright trailers, which required promotion.







We analyzed only the YouTube platform and selected videos that gained over 1 million views. Even with such a selection of these videos was enough to publish over a billion views over the course of the year. And if you also take into account videos on Facebook, VK, Vimeo and other social media, as well as a large number of YouTube videos that collected less than 1 million views and were not included in the list, then we can make a confident extrapolation that the total views were for the year at least 2 billion



Such a number of views ensures that the whole of Central Asia watched the trailers several times, remembered the heroes and was already looking forward to seeing the film for the premiere.

“We constantly have to engage in the promotion of video clips. YouTube has the best functionality for this, although since the end of 2015 Facebook has also been offering good video promotion models.

There are only two promotion schemes. If you need to see at least 1 million people in your country, you can:

1. Post this video in articles and news from local media or bloggers.
   
   This option usually does not give the required number of impressions, because People usually read the text of the news and only those interested watch the video. Therefore, to solve the problem of obtaining a certain number of views, usually after the first method, they resort to the second one.
2. Order a paid promotion video on YouTube, through the agency or independently.
   
   After setting up and running an ad, your video will be shown to YouTube visitors as “preroll”, i.e. before watching the main video, or this video will be included in the list of “recommended video”, thus gaining views.

If you do not regret money, then 1 million views can be collected in 5-20 days, depending on the parameters of the required audience. In the case of the promotion of the trailer for the film, I assume that the parameters were: geographical - only in those countries where the premiere will be, and age - from 16 years to, approximately, 55 years "

The peculiarity of the promotion of the film "Suicide Squad" is that the trailers are placed on different YouTube channels, most of which are not owned by Warner Bros holding.



In this case, we assume one of two options for work:

1. Warner Bros. has a contract with a network advertising agency, which provides the required results by viewing all published trailers in the right countries.
2. Warner Bros. using its PR department, it has its own contracts with key YouTube channels, and when launching an advertising campaign, it registers the final total value of the views that channel owners must provide for all trailers in the channel.

3. Musical co-branding

Attraction to the OST (Original Soundtrack) film of well-known musical performers is a common practice for Hollywood movies. In the case of the “Suicide Squad”, the producers guessed with a choice, since the publication of the clips (many came out in the spring and summer of 2016), which used footage from the film, brought at least 400 million views only on the YouTube platform. Details on page 3 of the same file :

4. Criticism of the study or that we have not yet analyzed?

Although our study is quite detailed, it does not cover some of the important channels of film advertising:

1. Promotion in social networks. Integration with public, bloggers, jokes. For example, integration with the public of “Kinomanii”, promotion of songs from OST in the first days of August and so on.
2. Special projects on film portals (in particular, at Kinopoisk), branding of portal pages.
3. Promotion in cinemas. Demonstration of trailers before watching a movie, posters and POS-materials in cinemas.
4. TV advertising (on the 4 tab of the research file there are links to 6 English and 6 Russian TV commercials), media and outdoor advertising.

If there are heroes among the readers who are ready to highlight the above ad channels, we will gladly expand the article with your research and put you on the list of co-authors.

5. Conclusions

This campaign is a good example of how to promote media products globally. The PR and advertising campaign has achieved all its goals: the rush in the media and the blog area has been created, the awareness of the main characters is excellent, the fees in the first weeks are very good.



It is necessary to separate the team that makes the film, and the team that promotes it, because these teams have different KPIs. In particular, the main criterion for the "promotion team" are: fees for the first and second week . The financial results of the following weeks are more dependent on the quality of the film itself and the compliance of the audience with the expectations of the film.



The financial results of any movie look like a graph, which dramatically goes down (see the data on the website kinopoisk.ru ). In the 2000s, the first weeks became fundamentally important, since it is possible to “break the main jackpot”, i.e. collect the largest share of all the money that will be spent this week to buy movie tickets. On the other hand, the “long tail” of fees is also important, on which good films earn basic money (for example, Titanic or Avatar, which achieved total revenues of $ 2,185 billion and $ 2.78 billion, respectively, over a long time of hire)



For clarity, let's compare the results of the suicide squad weeks with some films.

1. "Suicide squad" (world premiere: August 1, 2016)
   
   US rental: Warner Bros.
   
   Rental in Russia: Karo Premier
   
   
   
   
   
   
2. "Batman vs. Superman" (world premiere: 03/12/2016)
   
   US rental: Warner Bros.
   
   Rental in Russia: Karo Premier
   
   
   
   
   
   
3. "Deadpool" (world premiere: 01/21/2016)
   
   USA Rental: 20th Century Fox
   
   Rental in Russia: Twentieth Century Fox CIS
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
4. "Avatar" (world premiere: 12/10/2009)
   
   USA Rental: 20th Century Fox
   
   Rental in Russia: Twentieth Century Fox CIS
   
   
   
   
   
   

All figures for comparison are summarized in Google. The table is on the last tab:







The result of the comparison:

1. "Batman vs. Superman" beat all the packs in the first week, but at 4 weeks he showed the worst result. If we assume that marketing costs were equal to the budget for production, then investors eventually remained in profit of $ 372.662 million.
2. Often, the "Suicide Squad" is compared with the low-budget film "Deadpool" from another corporation "20th Century Fox". The promotion model of the film “Deadpool” was very similar to the one above, although the emphasis was shifted more to the buzz on social networks. The results of the weekly collections: in the first week, the fees are almost the same, and in the following weeks Deadpool collects more money, which means that the viral effect and the film itself were more popular with the audience than the “Suicide Squad”.
3. If we compare the "long tail", then the masterpieces in the end still collect more money. This clearly shows the film "Avatar", which, starting from 77 million in the first week, eventually collected 2.7 billion dollars. There are many such films, look at kinopoisk.ru, for example, Titanic or Zeropolis.

Why so many claims to the film after the premiere?

Let us return to the question that sounded at the beginning of the article. Firstly, this is really a loud premiere, and any loud project will always have spiteful critics. And secondly, the creators took a risky step and deleted some of the scenes that were in the trailers and popular music videos, which caused outrage. The first principle of advertising says: “the purchased product must comply with advertising”. If vivid scenes were shown in the advertisement (in the trailer), then they should be left in the film. It seems logical.



What do you think is more important? Cut the film, based on test impressions to improve the "watchability"? Or at any cost to save the scenes that viewers have seen in trailers dozens of times? Personally, I - for the second option, because A billion views of trailers strongly imprinted the brightest moments in our memory.