Over the past few years, it has become a trend for the summer blockbuster popcorn movies to buy a commercial during the Super Bowl. Why? I’m not making my plans to what movie I want to see in June right now.
Super Bowl commercials aren’t cheap, yes they’re ‘getting the word out’ but it still doesn’t make sense.
Were they movies that already have novels out for them, or prequel movies? Might be going for some pre-release sales, e.g., selling copies of The Hobbit or getting people to rent Iron Man and Iron Man 2 before going to see Iron Man 3.
You start hyping the summer films at Christmas and you don’t stop.
Come June, when you’re deciding which movie to buy tickets to, you’re not going to go see the one that you just heard of last week. You’re going to go see the one you’ve been looking forward to for months.
The point of all advertising is to make people aware of the product. The Super Bowl has the highest TV audience of the year, so you make a ton of people aware of your movie. That way, in six months, the movie is already familiar to them.
Ads are not designed to get you to buy the product immediately, anyway (other than ads for special sales). They’re designed to get you to remember the brand, so you’ll think of it when you want to buy the product.
They’re trying to create buzz so by the time the movie comes out, there’s an onslaught of interested viewers dying to buy tickets.
Also, the Super Bowl is unusual in that people actually pay attention to the commercials.
Yes, the key word is “buzz”. What better place than to show it than during this huge ad spectacle and have friends say, “Oh yeah, I want to see that!”
Most films make their biggest bucks in the first weekend, and if you can get 5 or 10 or 20 million more butts sitting in that theater on the first weekend, it was worth the price of the ad!
This is it. Building anticipation. People will tend to see the movie they’ve been anticipating, even if they find out it sucks. It turns the choice into a plan instead of an impulse decision.
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen previews for movies slated for next summer in this summer.