"Inception" Viral Marketing Strategy

September 27th, "

Box office results

Mainland box office breaks 200 million yuan in two weeks.

Because she did not know the content of the film, she was not very interested in Leonardo. When she opened the movie, Miss Li chose to watch the informant in the movie theater.

See the forum's "Inception" discussion, coupled with the strong recommendation of friends, two days later, Miss Li once again entered the theater.

Seeing the movie, she became the most active member of the office's "Inception" discussion group.

"Inception" has even become a mystery for netizens.

Miss Li said with a smile.

As of September 12th, "Inception" landed only 12 days in China, and its box office had exceeded 200 million yuan.

Before Zhang Yimou's "Hawthorn love" was released, "Inception" ruled the major movie theaters with overwhelming momentum.

However, the hottest blockbuster in the mainland is slightly dull.

The film was premiered at 0:00 on September 1st, because there was not much publicity in the early days, and the zero spot was not popular. The major cities in the country basically opened only one hall, and the occupancy rate was only six to 70%.

This kind of bland did not last long.

According to the statistics of Baidu post bar, on the first day of the film's debut in China, the "Inception" is on the top of the day.

For a while, "Inception" was widely touted and discussed by micro-blog in various forums.

With the effect of word of mouth spread, the film, which was not a strong publicity campaign, won over 100 million yuan in the first week.

Around the globe, inception has long been a boom.

In July 16th, "Inception" opened in North America "dreamy". 3792 theaters and 7100 screens were screened in full. The box office opened at the weekend for $62 million 800 thousand.

This box office result easily won second runner up of the non sequel science fiction, after Afanda's $77 million box office.

Since then, the "Inception" maintained a very good box office curve, second weeks to produce 80 million dollars in box office, third weeks of $50 million 400 thousand box office.

In the end, the "Inception" won a $270 million box office in North America.

With the success of North America, the global market for inception has also been thrived and spread like a virus.

The first week of the film was shown in a small scale, only in 9 districts and a total of about 1830 screens, producing a box office of 16 million 500 thousand dollars.

In the second week, the film was released to 38 districts and 5650 screens, and the overseas market had already got $85 million 700 thousand.

In the third week, the film scale expanded to 51 regions, and the box office of overseas films exceeded 170 million dollars.

As of September 5th, the total box office of Inception was approaching $700 million.

Marketing strategy: balanced tactics in viral marketing

The investment in inception is as high as $175 million, which is close to the $200 million recovery high risk line.

As a result, the overall marketing of the film naturally became the first priority of producer Warner Bros. in 2010.

According to legend, the propaganda cost of "Inception" is close to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Unlike the main media coverage and word of mouth communication in the country, the "Inception" is a popular propaganda mode in North America. The marketing team of director Christopher Nolan uses "viral marketing" to impress people.

In fact, as early as the 2008 Batman forward 2: The Dark Knight, Nolan launched a revolution in "viral marketing".

In fact, the danger coefficient of science fiction movies is very high. It is too simple and easy to be demoted "mentally retarded", difficult to understand and difficult to understand.

The propaganda strategy of "Inception" cleverly circumvented these difficulties. Warner company began to publicize the mysterious and startling plots and images. When the date of the exhibition was approaching, it showed the characteristics of high intelligence, horror and epic. The audience was lifted up their appetite, every step was actively followed up, and voluntarily joined the "viral marketing" army, and all kinds of discussions taking the network as the main media came one after another.

The so-called "viral marketing" is through the user's word of mouth publicity network to spread and spread information as a virus, strictly speaking, it is artificially created and promoted word of mouth.

"I think this is the most exciting way of making films. It brings a huge challenge from the perspective of commodity marketing."

Christopher Nolan said, "on the one hand, you have to make the film mysterious. On the other hand, you have to give the audience enough information to make them interested in seeing the movie.

And I am trying to strike a balance between the two. "

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Way to success

Word of mouth marketing + deliberately creating topics

In addition to the virus sites used in inception, suspense poster trailers, and reality interaction, there are many successful ways of viral marketing in Hollywood movies.

The phantom record, which costs only $15 thousand, makes full use of the way users interact to get billions of dollars in box office.

"Ghost record" took only a week to complete. After that, only a few small-scale screenings were arranged.

Subsequently, the publicity side began to conduct online surveys, collect fans' opinions, and formulate film projection plans based on feedback.

The move was stunning. In the first week, the website received requests from fans across the United States.

Soon, "ghost record" was extended to 159 theaters.

On this basis, the issuer continues to carry out crazy Internet marketing.

They set up forums on websites such as Twitter and Eventful to give fans the opportunity to express their disagreements.

In a few weeks, "ghost record" has become a hot topic on Twitter. At the same time, more than 47 thousand fans uploaded videos on Facebook to express their views on the film.

A staff member of a distribution company in Beijing said that traditional marketing is top-down, and viral marketing is bottom-up. It spreads from the grassroots, and its essence is the influence of the audience rather than the propagator.

At present, many domestic films have taken part in interaction with netizens by joining the Kaixin and micro-blog, so as to carry out viral marketing, such as "Jinyi Wei" and "Ye Wen 2".

Through the successful case of viral marketing in Hollywood, whether it is the "Dark Knight" and "Inception" produced by the mainstream companies with high cost and large production, or the low cost "Blair witch" and "ghost record" produced by independent companies, whether they are horror films, comedy films, science fiction films or animated cartoons, there are not many restrictions on the scale and type of the film.

"The best quality of film is the most basic element of successful viral marketing."

The staff said, viral marketing is mainly rely on word of mouth, if the quality of the film itself is not high, can only flicker the audience for a while, can not form a lasting word of mouth effect.

Crazy stone is a successful case of word marketing in domestic films.

According to relevant media statistics, 50% of the spectators who went to the theater to see "crazy stones" were recommended by relatives and friends. 30%, because of the popularity of "stone" on the Internet.

In addition, having a certain topic is also a key element of viral marketing.

If there is a topic, someone will pay attention to it, and then there will be a follow-up report by the media. After the media is enlarged, more people will pay attention to it, thus forming a virtuous circle which is expanding constantly.

A mysterious virus web site

In order to match the mystery of the film, the issuer can be very anxious to play the game.

When "Inception" has just started filming, people can hardly find a single plot of the film and the inside of the group, which gives the film a mysterious veil.

In 2009, Warner Brothers launched the official website of inception.

But on the front page of the website, there is only one gyro that keeps spinning.

What is the connection between the top and the plot? What does the title "Inception" mean?

The initial appearance of the film began with a strange T-shirt.

In April of this year's WonderCon exhibition in San Francisco, some of the audience got such a T-shirt: the front face of the T-shirt was a strange machine with a QR two-dimensional code on the back.

In fact, the T-shirt is printed on the core props -- the dreamland machine that allows users to share dreams with others, while the backside 2D code implies a web site, which leads people to a viral marketing website, PASIVDevice.org.

This website is actually an application manual for "dreamland machine".

At the same time, some journalists and movie practitioners also received mysterious gifts: a small iron box equipped with a top and a U disk.

The preview of the movie is stored in the U disk, and the QR two-dimensional code on the box points to another movie website Mind-Crime.com.

This website is divided into 4 propaganda stages, each stage will provide new content, such as posters, trailers, etc., but if users want to see these contents, they need to complete the maze game and other small tasks.

An American journalist who broke up the first concept poster of inception space said the poster was hidden in a mini game called "psychological crime" in the official website of the inception space.

Participants need to design a complex game maze according to the requirements before completing the game and getting the poster.

Inception also has a virus web site hidden in some street posters. This website is called "What Is Dream Share".

This website introduces the source and theoretical basis of dreamland machine in the form of anonymous blog, and tries to uncover the plot of the so-called "dream of theft".

Trick two popularize dream knowledge

Since then, the film's propaganda has not started from the plot, but has revolve around the core creative "dream machine technology" and "consciousness crime" and popularize dream science knowledge.

In this way, the audience had a preliminary understanding of the film before watching the movie, and was curious about this unique idea.

It is understood that the publicity staff specially shot a video of director Nolan's interview with dream scientists, exploring the video of dream science and consciousness of crime principle.

This short film has achieved good results. Many netizens are interested in the prospect of dream Science described in the film, and begin to think about whether this technology can be realized in the future.

Some media also took the opportunity to do some popular science propaganda to stir up the topic together with the film.

Move three let marketing go to the streets

Next, the movie publicity from the network to the next line.

A few weeks before the movie, marketers hung huge posters on two streets in New York. One was the curl of the fa ade outside the building, revealing the floor, and the other was rolling floods from the top windows of the building.

The two posters are realistic enough to be false.

The giant poster not only highlights the characteristics of the movie's visual effects, but also accords with the slogan "The Dream is Real", which has also attracted people's attention.

Nearly a year's viral marketing also made "Inception" win the most anticipated movie award awarded by Spike television in the United States a month before its release.