film creation often faces a core contradiction: balancing commercial interests and artistic pursuits. This balanced attempt not only involves the production and performance of the film itself, but also goes deep into the marketing strategy and management of audience expectations.
In today's film industry, it is increasingly common for marketing to be at odds with film content. In order to chase box office, many film producers often use marketing methods that are inconsistent with the theme of the film to attract a wider audience.
This situation is particularly prominent in the field of literary and artistic film marketing. Since art films themselves do not have a large audience base, they rely more on marketing to attract audiences outside the circle. However, improper marketing often causes long-term harm to the market: on the one hand, creators will lose the trust of the audience; on the other hand, the audience's trust in the entire film market environment will also be weakened.
This is not alarmist. This kind of "mismatch" in marketing and content is becoming a major challenge that the film industry needs to face up to.
The latest case is the movie " Grass and Trees World " - just from the poster style, you can see its rapid turn in marketing. In the early stage of publicity, the film studio launched a poster work by famous poster designer Huang Hai, which used visual elements similar to Gu Xiaogang's previous work, making people think that the film was a sequel to "Spring River Plumbing", and clearly marked the film as "Landscape" on the poster. Figure·Volume 2”. However, Gu Xiaogang actually changed his creative attitude in this work. Therefore, viewers with such expectations will see a very different style of "Desperate Volume 2" after entering the cinema - an anti-fraud and anti-MLM film. There is a huge difference between this expectation and the reality. It undoubtedly had a negative impact on box office results. The producers of
were probably "sensitively" aware of this market trend, so they quickly adjusted the film's promotion direction and launched a poster with a similar "slogan style" to last year's summer blockbuster film " or ". A new poster was also designed to imitate the theme of the "small card" style, completely abandoning the tonal basis of literary and artistic films in publicity, and moving towards the "vulgar line".
can combine Huang Hai's poster design and "small card" style in the promotion of the same movie and realize a coordinated movie promotion team. This is the first time within the author's limited knowledge. However, has this shift in marketing focus successfully reversed the film's unfavorable market performance during its initial release? The results are obviously regrettable.
Market and Creativity: Difficulties in Film Marketing
Although "The World of Grass and Trees" and "All or Nothing" have similarities in social benefits and themes, Gu Xiaogang's image style is subtle and subtle, which is different from the intense, exposed, and unrestrained style of "All or Nothing". Big difference. Therefore, audiences based on the expectations of "All or Nothing" may not give the film positive word-of-mouth reviews.
Therefore, in this case, if the marketing strategy is to follow the brand style of director Gu Xiaogang, it may hurt the box office and the credibility of the director; and if it is promoted in a way that benchmarks other works, it may damage the film. word-of-mouth - this situation has become a common dilemma in current movie marketing.
This is very reminiscent of a famous "public case" in previous years when referring to the dilemma of movie marketing - the movie " The Last Night on Earth " was released on December 31, 2018, with the theme of "New Year's Eve with a kiss" "" is a marketing theme, promoted through social platforms such as Douyin and Weibo, and successfully attracted audiences. The pre-sale box office reached 159 million yuan, setting a new pre-sale record for Chinese literary films. However, director Bi Gan's authorial style has a high threshold for viewing and has not been recognized by most audiences. This has resulted in extremely low online ratings and large box office fluctuations. The box office plummeted by more than 95% on the second day of release, and the film schedule and attendance rates have dropped significantly. It is considered "Word of mouth backlash" caused by excessive marketing.
It can be seen that the audience experience plays a key role in determining the film market performance. The experience of moviegoers can be analyzed along four main dimensions: entertainment, education, escape and aesthetics. Together, these four dimensions shape audiences' cognitive and emotional assessments of the quality of a film experience.Among them, entertainment and escape are mainly associated with emotional values, while education and aesthetics are related to functional values.
Research has pointed out that emotional value is more important than functional value in improving movie-viewing satisfaction and ensuring film market success. Therefore, to enhance the appeal and audience satisfaction of movies, production and marketing should focus on emotional and aesthetic experiences rather than just functional value.
The marketing difficulties of the movies "The World" and "The Last Night on Earth" stem from their improper selection of value areas. The promotion of "The World of Grass and Trees" emphasized educational values, such as anti-fraud and anti-pyramid schemes, while "The Last Night on Earth" overly focused on entertainment and escape elements. These two films, which are supposed to focus on aesthetic experience, chose inconsistent priorities in their marketing. This mismatched marketing strategy resulted in a huge gap between audience expectations and actual movie viewing experience, seriously affecting their satisfaction and movie evaluation. Disappointment of expectations due to the marketing strategy was a key factor in the overall negative reception of the film by audiences.
From an economic perspective, movies are an "experience product", that is, a product whose quality or satisfaction is difficult to accurately evaluate before purchasing. Consumers need to go through actual experience to understand the match between product features and personal needs. Therefore, this product marketing strategy often focuses on building trust, strengthening the brand image, and using customer reviews and recommendations to influence the decisions of potential consumers. Therefore, the distribution and marketing strategy of a movie is the decisive factor in whether it can successfully win the trust and satisfaction of the audience. Effective marketing can not only promote the growth of movie box office, but also bring long-term brand value accumulation through word-of-mouth effect.
Regrettably, despite the continuous occurrence of box office failures in the market due to "off-the-mark" marketing, film distributors do not seem to have changed their overly exaggerated or misleading promotion strategies. This is largely determined by the current communication environment. However, the side effects of this marketing strategy cannot be ignored, especially the impact on young directors. After the marketing failure of "The Last Night on Earth", director Bi Gan went silent for six years without releasing a new film. The impact of "The World of Grass and Trees" on Gu Xiaogang is not yet clear, but it does not seem to be a positive one. This situation may have a long-term impact on the director's creative career - improper marketing strategies often make the director regarded as a representative of failure. The audience may not remember which distributor caused the gap, but the director's name may be remembered. Negative mark. This cannot be said to be a heavy burden for creators.
Calling for a more complete film industry chain
Frankfurt School theorists Adorno and Horkheimer pointed out in "Dialectics of Enlightenment" that the commodification of cultural products leads to standardization and homogenization, limits cultural diversity and weakens the artistic value Critical. Therefore, if a film, as a cultural product, is designed for mass consumption, its artistic integrity may be compromised. The work of Jean-Luc Godard, a representative of the French New Wave, challenges the traditional narrative and aesthetic norms of the film industry, criticizes the commodification of film, and explores the contradiction between artistic ambition and commercial pressure.
This reminds us that although movies are consumer goods, it is particularly important to maintain attention and pursuit of their artistic value.
However, in the severe real environment, movies must enter the category of social texts through commercial distribution, and it is impossible to completely get rid of their commercial attributes and exist as pure artistic pursuits. The movie market has a short profit window and is a product with a very short "appreciation period". Although most movie release keys last for more than 30 days, significant profit-making time is concentrated in the early stages of release. Once this window period is missed, even if the movie's reputation rebounds in the later period, its box office trend will usually show a downward wedge shape. Therefore, it is crucial to seize the critical period and adjust or change the issuance strategy in a timely manner. What's more, without the support of distributors, films by directors such as Li Ruijun, Bi Gan and Gu Xiaogang may simply not be able to reach a wider audience and increase accessibility to various cultural expressions.
In other words, aggressive distribution strategies can promote the integration of art and business, bring innovative narrative styles and types, and have a positive impact on the development of film art and the aesthetic level of audiences.
Therefore, building a film industry chain covering the entire industrial process is of positive significance for eliminating distributors' untruths in film promotion.
In the Chinese film industry, including some large-scale production projects, they usually start looking for distributors after the production is completed. This common industry practice highlights the market game between producers and distributors, in which producers often need to wait for prices to find distributors that can provide the best conditions. This process clearly reflects the dynamic relationship between the two market entities, especially the strategic choices among various issuance methods such as how to share profits (account sharing), guarantee minimum profits (guaranteed), or direct buyout. This market mechanism shows the relative advantage that the distributor has due to its proximity to the market terminal, which often results in the producer being marginalized in the distribution process, and the distributor usually monopolizes most of the right to speak. Therefore, establishing an integrated entire industry chain from production to distribution can effectively solve the problem of marginalization of producers in the film industry, redistribute the right to speak, and achieve a fair distribution of benefits. This integration helps balance artistic and commercial values, optimize market contact strategies, and improve fairness and transparency in the industry. Through this structural adjustment, the control of a single link over the film life cycle can be reduced, so that each link can contribute and benefit under more equal conditions, thus promoting the healthy development of the film industry.
Author: Zheng Yang
Text: Zheng Yang (Associate Professor, School of Film and Television, Shanghai Normal University) Editor: Fan Xin Editor: Shao Ling
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