Beyond Movie Trailers: Marketing 'The Hunger Games'

Home , Catching Fire, Suzanne Collins, Tim Palen

Issue: Digital Marketing

Short Article: Beyond Movie Trailers: Marketing ‘The Hunger Games’

By: Joan Oleck

Pub. Date: March 2, 2015 Access Date: September 27, 2021 DOI: 10.1177/2374556815573712 Source URL: http://businessresearcher.sagepub.com/sbr-1645-94775-2641154/20150302/short-article-beyond-movie-trailers-marketing- the-hunger-games ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. ©2021 SAGE Publishing, Inc. All Rights Reserved. “The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film” Executive Summary

“Hunger Games” movies win plaudits for innovative digital marketing campaigns that include a variety of social media strategies. Full Article

The “Hunger Games” movies have been some of the most popular big-screen releases of recent years—propelled by some of the most ambitious digital marketing campaigns. Months of multiplatform promotions preceded Lionsgate's “The Hunger Games” in 2012 and “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” in November 2013, the first two in the series of four films drawn from Suzanne Collins's mega-successful dystopian trilogy. That pattern continued with “Mockingjay: Part One,” the third film in the series, which was released at Thanksgiving 2014 and is the star of its own digital marketing campaign. The campaign for “Catching Fire” augmented the usual movie poster ads and trailers with several alternative strategies. One of these included billboards in New York and Los Angeles in which the film's stars were dressed in future shock-style outfits that “Hunger Games” fans would recognize as the over-the-top wardrobe choices citizens of the Capitol “district” would make even as they enslaved and oppressed residents of the 11 surviving districts in the fictional nation of Panem. The made-up brand the billboards touted? “Capitol Couture.” The marketers also designed a special site using Tumblr to display Capitol Couture's fashions. Critics loved the campaign: “It is already one of the most peculiar and elaborate transmedia marketing efforts ever mounted for a feature film franchise,” BuzzFeed exulted. 1 A 2014 PBS “Frontline” documentary, “Generation Like,” examined the same campaign with a more jaundiced view. Documentary host/author Douglas Rushkoff, who studies social media and the ways in which corporations are jockeying to turn young viewers into consumers, pointed out, “Today's teens … don't need to be chased down. They're putting themselves out there online for anyone to see. They tell the world what they think is cool, starting with their own online profiles.” 2 For his look at “Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” Rushkoff interviewed New Jersey teen Ceili Lynch, who had spent an enormous amount of time playing the online games the movie's digital campaign offered and tweeting and retweeting about the actors in “Catching Fire.” Her reward was a chance to win “sparks” (online rewards) and to communicate online with one of the actors. (She succeeded.) By the time Lynch spoke to Rushkoff, she had won 69,186 sparks. Facebook campaign for “Hunger Games: Catching Fire” included this portrait of the evil President Snow, “The art lies in allowing fans to feel as if they are discovering a film, but in truth sponsored by the fictional Capitol Couture. (Lionsgate) Hollywood's new promotional paradigm involves a digital hard sell in which little is left to chance,” New York Times movie industry reporter Brooks Barnes wrote about the initial “Hunger Games” campaign, back in 2012. 3 That campaign for the first movie in the series, he wrote, preceded the film with a yearlong digital effort using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and iPhone games followed by live Yahoo streaming from the premiere. Lionsgate stoked the “Hunger Games” fire, Barnes wrote, “by carefully lighting online kindling (releasing a fiery logo to movie blogs) and controlling the Internet burn over the course of months,” via, among others, a Facebook contest and Twitter scavenger hunt. 4 A positive for the studio was the books' built-in fan base—author Collins has sold 87 million books worldwide. 5 A negative was the story's core: a fight to the death among children. That part had to be carefully excised from the promotions, according to Barnes. He detailed how Lionsgate's campaign team drafted a chronology for the campaign during 2011–12 using spreadsheets coded in 12 colors that listed day- by-day activities. One such activity brought five fans to the North Carolina set. 6 Another strategy was a website, thecapitol.pn, allowing visitors to make their own ID cards for Panem. More than 800,000 had done that by the time Barnes's article ran. On Twitter, ID cardholders could campaign online to be elected mayor of Panem's various districts. In

November 2011, the studio released the main trailer on iTunes; it drew 8 million views its first day. That December, a new poster was released and cut into 100 puzzle pieces; 100 websites received digital “pieces” and fans were invited to post their “piece” on Twitter and search that social media channel to put together the poster. Fans complied en masse. “Hunger Games” movie hubs—collections of links to features about one particular movie—went live on PopSugar, Moviefone and The Huffington Post in January 2012, which also saw the debut of the Tumblr blog “Capitol Couture.” Barnes wrote that 50 more websites coordinated a ticket giveaway. And “Capitol TV,” offering movie footage and user-generated videos related to the film, generated almost 17.7 million video views by the time of Barnes's article. Flash-forward to 2015: The Lionsgate machine has continued cranking out its digital marketing marvels. For “Mockingjay,” it released a set of posters, “District Heroes,” which used beautifully photographed portraits of citizens holding symbols of their respective districts' work products. The citizens were described as “ready, willing and eager to fuel the Panem of tomorrow.” But on second look, the posters' “message” seemed to be way off the mark of what their supposed sponsor—the evil Capitol, which in the books oppresses the 11 surviving districts—would have intended. For instance, the portrait of 6-year-old “Lily Elsington” shows a beautiful little girl curiously covered in dirt and holding a half-eaten apple and a gas mask to symbolize the Mining District. Yet: dirt, gas mask, apple = oppression and poverty. In another poster, “Elias Haan” from the Lumber District holds his own wooden, prosthetic leg in his hands, representing—well, viewers can guess. Teen “Hunger Games” fans must have taken delight in debating the posters as either twisted logic by the Capitol or sabotage by the rebelling district citizens. “District Heroes” wasn't the only digital marketing magic. Lionsgate also released a series of videos about the districts, celebrating, for instance, the Capitol's Peacekeeper force from District 2, and the power facility in District 5, as well as baking lessons from the Grain District. 7 All these strategies were highly targeted, Lionsgate chief marketing officer Tim Palen told Adweek in 2012. “There's metrics for how you're connecting, where you're connecting, and where you're not connecting, which is very valuable as a marketing tool and allows us to gauge our campaign as we go along—and switch directions if we need to,” Palen said. 8 Apparently it all worked—“Mockingjay” was the second-highest domestic grossing film of 2014, bringing in $309 million. 9 And, chances are, all those “Hunger Games” fans out there are still keeping busy with the videos and online posters, “liking,” sharing and tweeting away, as unpaid players in Lionsgate's marketing campaign. About the Author

Freelance writer Joan Oleck is based in Brooklyn, N.Y. She teaches writing as an adjunct professor at New York University. She has held editing and writing positions at Businessweek, Newsday, The Detroit News, Restaurant Business and School Library Journal. Notes

[1] Adam B. Vary, “5 Things You Should Know About The Curious New Marketing Campaign For ‘The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” BuzzFeed, Aug. 23, 2013, http://tinyurl.com/krzlsyj. [2] “Generation Like,” PBS Frontline, Feb. 18, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/q3oy6gw. [3] Brooks Barnes, “How ‘Hunger Games’ Built Up Must-See Fever,” The New York Times, March 18, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/ohw9kn9. [4] Ibid. [5] Author Suzanne Collins's website, accessed Jan. 12, 2015, http://tinyurl.com/6muz77q. [6] Barnes, op. cit. [7] Michael Lee, “‘Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I’ Reveals Latest Viral Marketing Strategy District Voices,” http://tinyurl.com/nrm4as4, Oct. 21, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/ndcplfp. [8] “Brand Genius 2012: Tim Palen, Hunger Games,” Adweek, Oct. 22, 2012, http://tinyurl.com/98ekbh6. [9] “The top 10 films at the box office in 2014,” the Associated Press, Dec. 31, 2014, http://tinyurl.com/pxyukqx.

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