Film - Jungle Book Fact File

THE JUNGLE BOOK (1967 and 2016) student workbook:

ADVERTISING AND MARKETING: Media Language, Media Representation and Social and Cultural context: Disney

How media portray events, issues, individuals and social groups. How the media through advertising and marketing, codes and conventions and techniques communicate meanings.

Reflecting and constructing social and cultural issues and beliefs. Messages and values. 

What ways can you market a film? Think of 10 ways of marketing a film to an audience and upload some visual examples… 

#1 Do Something Remarkable – The Publicity Stunt

#2 Pre-Roll Video Advertising

#3 Be Smart With Press Events

#4 Let your viewers experience the story

#5 Video Marketing

#6 Create a visually compelling & functional sub-site

#7 Make your Facebook Page Interactive

#8 Use social competitions & quizzes

#9 Using Celebrity & Brand Partnerships

#10 Using Memes & Other Forms of UGC

What does Film Marketing involve?

> Marketing involves all of the deals done to get the films shown and promoted. 

• Give examples of above the line Above The Line

> Above the line (ATL) advertising is where mass media is used to promote brands and reach out to the target consumers.

These include conventional media as we know it, television and radio advertising, print as well as internet.

This is communication that is targeted to a wider spread of audience, and is not specific to individual consumers. ATL advertising tries to reach out to the mass as consumer audience.

•         Give examples of ‘below the line’

> Below the line (BTL)  advertising is more one to one, and involves the distribution of pamphlets, handbills, stickers, promotions, brochures placed at point of sale, on the roads through banners and placards.

> It could also involve product demos and samplings at busy places like malls and market places or residential complexes.

> For certain markets, like rural markets where the reach of mass media like print or television is limited, BTL marketing with direct consumer outreach programmes do make the most sense. 

Marketing – The Jungle Book 1967

•  Give several examples of how the Jungle Book was marketed in 1967

> Disney thought the first version of the script was too dark for family audiences, that the audience wouldn’t be able to identify with the boy, Mowgli, and that the villain, the tiger Shere Khan, would be a cliché; so Disney himself took control and changed the production team. 

> Theatrical run: The Jungle Book was released in October 1967, just 10 months after Walt's death. Some copies were in a double feature with Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar.  Produced on a budget of $4 million, the film was a massive success, finishing 1967 as the fourth highest-grossing movie of the year. The Jungle Book was re-released theatrically in North America three times, 1978, 1984, and 1990, and also in Europe throughout the 1980s. The total gross is $141 million in the United States and $205 million worldwide. The North American total, after adjustments for inflation, is estimated to be the 29th highest-grossing film of all time in the United States. An estimated $108 million alone came from Germany making it the third highest-grossing film of all time there only behind Avatar ($137 million) and Titanic ($125 million). However, it is Germany's highest-grossing film of all time in terms of admissions with 27.3 million tickets sold, nearly 10 million more than Titanic's 18.8 million tickets sold.

> Walt Disney Home Entertainment released it on VHS in 1991 (and the UK in 1993) and on DVD in 2007. It was re-released several times on DVD and on BluRay – with extras or different packaging in order to pick up new buyers (e.g. the Limited Edition DVD released by Buena Vista Home Entertainment in 1999 or the Diamond line combination of Blu Ray and DVD in 2014). Occasionally Disney films are ‘vaulted’ meaning they are not available for purchase, which pushes up the demand – the Diamond edition of JB disappeared to the vault in January 2017, for example. However, the classic edition of the DVD and merchandise relating to JB are still available in Disney Stores and on the Disney website, which is marking the 50th anniversary. The original vinyl soundtrack for JB was also the first record to achieve gold status in the USA from an animated feature film. JB has also been released by Disney as digital downloads via iTunes, Disney Movies Anywhere, Disney Life, Amazon Video, Movies Anywhere, Google Play etc.

> Disney produced a live-action version in 1994 and an animated sequel, The Jungle Book 2, in 2003, which Disney had intended to release direct to video (under Michael Eisner a number of straight to video sequels were produced, which in turn promoted the original films).

MARKETING – THE JUNGLE BOOK 2016

All the animals and landscapes etc were created on computers, mostly by the British digital effects house MPC

•         Give several examples of how the Jungle Book was marketed in 2016

> Disney made several smart marketing choices during the lead-in to the release of The Jungle Book that helped build hype and buzz for the movie. They combined typical marketing approaches, special opportunities available only to Disney, and a few unique techniques and messaging particular to this film

•         Mention any special promos, stunts, law of the jungle, theme parks, sand sculptures etc

 > Toss Red Meat to the Base: In August, Mr. Favreau bounded onto a 7,800-seat arena at a Disney fan convention in Anaheim, Calif and showed sneak-peek footage from his film. He hobnobbed with three “Jungle Book” stars on stage, including Neel Sethi, who plays the man-cub Mowgli. Thousands of movie posters were handed out. This was the first marketing stunt for “The Jungle Book,” which cost roughly $175 million to make. By going to happy, peppy Disneyphiles first, Disney ensured that the movie’s initial blast on social media would be a positive one.

•           Theme Park Armies, Activate

> Various corners of the Disney empire pitched in to promote “The Jungle Book.” A New Year’s Day stunt on the Disney Channel, for instance, was used to portray the film as one of the year’s first blockbuster offerings for families and children.

> But the synergistic heavy lifting was done by Disney theme parks. During the jam-packed spring break weeks, park theaters in Florida and California offered sneak-peek footage of the movie, with Mr. Favreau providing introductions.

Marketing

• How did they attract the male demographic?

> Generally speaking, women and girls see Disney’s magic castle logo on a trailer and are pulled closer. The opposite can be true with guys. So Disney aggressively and repeatedly pitched “The Jungle Book” to male audiences.

> Commercials on ESPN portrayed the movie as coming not from the studio that made “Cinderella” but “from the studio that brought you ‘Pirates of the Caribbean.’” An extended 3-D trailer for “The Jungle Book” was attached to “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which had an audience that was 58 percent male.

> And Disney rolled out an action-oriented trailer during the Super Bowl.

• How did the aim at the Hispanic market?

> Studio marketers have learned that Hispanic moviegoers tend to buy tickets in particularly large groups; if you hook one family member, you can get an exponential result. To achieve that goal, Disney teamed with Univision for a five-week stunt that brought “Jungle Book” characters and clips to telenovelas, talk shows and sports coverage. Disney even built a tool to allow Univision personalities to appear in scenes.

More Marketing Strategies:

>Bloggers

>How did they keep the film from looking too childish

> Social media was also used with a large Facebook, Instagram and Twitter campaign along with You Tube and viral marketing campaigns

A fan blog:

A twitter fan page:

MERCHANDISE

ADVERTISING AND CROSS PROMOTION:

> More TV spots would setup the story of how the animals in the jungle are either trying to help or hunt Mowgli, with those who care for him trying to return him to the human world. It’s good but the focus here is still very much on the spectacle of the visuals.

> Disney has released a new The Jungle Book TV spot. It seems at this point they’re not really trying to sell the plot, which is good because The Jungle Book isn’t so much a plot-driven narrative as one that’s driven by Mowgli’s relationship with the various jungle creatures he encounters.

> Cross promotion – marketing activities carried out in cooperation by two different companies using the popularity of their brand names to promote one another’s – is today a major profit source for Disney’. 5 Disney also licensed the characters for use by other companies, such as Virgin who developed a Jungle Book video game for Sega, Gameboy and PC in the early 1990s.

Advertising and Cross Promotion:

• Kenzo: They use cross promotion to appeal to a wider audience, they do this through using a glamorous woman, who then freaks out dancing to a fat boy slim song which appeals to a wider more diverse audience.

• ´Airbnb: Airbnb co branded its advertising with the airline Qantas to promote its holidays to the audience on an emotional level as they spread the message that flying with Qantas and staying with air bnb feels like home.

• ´Online ads can attract more customers through cross promotion as two brands are advertised at the same time so loyal customers of one brand may then become a user of another brands product or service as a result of this as the cross promotion highlights similarities between the two brands and could then mean that the product or service are components to each other. 

• ´Stars used to make adults pay attention. In advertising famous people are commonly featured to advertise products as a method to grab the audiences attention especially adults as they familiarise with the advert and become engaged and listen to what their idol or someone who influences them has to say from a point of interest.

The Poster Campaign

The whole poster campaign is really meant to sell the lush visuals of the movie in addition to the all-star cast that voices the various animal characters. So there’s a very nice visual consistency across the whole campaign. New technologies such as Photo-shop and graphic programs have enabled Disney to produce these eye-catching posters

Intertextuality

The Lion King was one of Disney’s most popular films and there are scenes reminiscent of it in The Jungle Book. For example: 

Definition of Intertextuality refers to the process of creating references to any kind of media text via another media text. In other words Intertextuality essentially means for a type of media (film,television,music etc) to pay homage to another media text.

Trailer

The UK Teaser Trailer (duration 1 minute 49 seconds):

MAKING OF THE JUNGLE BOOK