Entertainment Marketing: Flora and Son
Film Promotion and Marketing Campaign
Apple TV+ for Flora and Son (Carney, 2023)
Initial Release Date: January 22, 2023, Sundance Film Festival
Genre: Drama, Musical, Comedy, Music, Romance
Film Synopsis
Flora, a single mother who has a strained relationship with her teenage son Max, retrieves a guitar from a dumpster when looking to find him a hobby and discovers that one person's trash can be a family's salvation.
Audience
Although it isn’t an age-rated film, it mostly markets to a mature audience based on some sexual content and profanity. Therefore, this audience would include individuals over 13, typically from 25-40. It would also include director John Carney’s fan-base, since he has released many films and accumulated a following. Other viewers could include people who are partial to Apple TV+, music lovers, Joseph Gordon-Levitt fans (and other actors’ fan bases), or people who live in Ireland, since this film is about an Irish family living in Dublin.
Personality
-Fun
-Youthful
-Musical
-Playful
-Funny
-Exciting
-Raunchy humor
-Family oriented
-Immature
-Romantic
Strategy
Since we have a mix of both college students and a mature audience, we have selected two marketing strategies to cater to each audience's preferences. One will be to have a social media focus, specifically on Instagram, Facebook, and Tiktok. Then, our other strategy will be to design a website and create content that fuels interested individuals with calendar events regarding the film's launch, current media, actor interviews and biographies, as well as articles by staff members and critics on the film. We will strive to measure analytics on both social platforms as well as through the website, and also to utilize ambiguity to create a sense of want for the customers.
Usually 50% of the total film budget goes into marketing, so if a film costs 100 million dollars to make, 50 million dollars would go into the marketing budget to get the movie sold. This film was bought by Apple TV+ for a total of 20 million dollars. The budget was most likely over 80 million dollars, so I am guessing that marketing would be about 40 million between the production companies used (Likely Story, Distressed Films, FilmNation Entertainment, Fifth Season, Screen Ireland, Treasure Entertainment). Apple TV+ would most likely spend about another 25-30 million on marketing, since some marketing was already done by Sundance Festival and critics who attended the festival.
Social Media Outline
Photo sourcing: photos need to be sourced for the social media posts and planning on that to start. Each photo that is sourced should contain 3 adjectives of the personality of the film. Photos could include director and crew highlights, screen grabs, actors being interviewed, etc.
Captions: captions should include some sub-form of promotion like talking about an upcoming release event, actors, include a critics quote, etc. something to engage and entice the audience.
Planning: schedule our social media posts
Editing: come up with some type of theme these film posts can have, maybe occurring once a week on AppleTVs social media accounts Friday for Flora Friday
Video content: video content, reels etc. showing trends maybe with actors etc and creating a following
Blog Content/Website Outline
Include video and photo content accompanied with well-crafted writing. This can include articles written by marketing staff as well as outside articles from critics about the film. Include interviews from John Carney, the film crew, and cast members. Also, the website will include short written teasers of the film.
Timeline
All media should showcase the elements that are included in the timeline of the film's marketing below.
6 months to release: stars and cast news, shooting news
5 months to release: teaser release
4 months to release: poster release
3 months to release: release date announcement and release news
2 months to release: trailer release
1 month to release: distribution of media kits (trailer, poster, media report)
10 days to release: meetings and interviews with stars
5 days to release: media release for reporters and critics
3 days to release: a premiere event showing with stars and celebrities
