About Skyfall
Skyfall is the 23rd film in the James Bond franchise featuring Daniel Craig in his third performance as Bond. It was released in 2012 and was very successful.Skyfall was made on a huge budget, allowing them to have a large and expansive advertising and marketing campaign. It's owned by Sony a huge global conglomerate of the media industry, Sony are one of the biggest players in the game meaning the production company behind Skyfall had a lot of money to play with when creating the film. As well as this Sony Distributed the film via distributors they own; MGM and Colombia Pictures. The film was aimed at a global audience.
Synergy/Product Tie ins and Advertising
Skyfalls marketing team collaborated with other companies to help promote film. Some of these companies included Heineken, Tom Ford Suits and Omega Seamaster Watches. These companies teamed up with Bond to help sell there product and this is known as synergy, this is when two companies team up and focus there efforts on 1 linked advertising campaign instead of two separate campaigns.
For example special creates of Heineken Beer were released before the Skyfall film with James Bond on them, giving buyers the chance to win tickets to the premier but as well as helping sell creates of beer this also raises awareness for the upcoming James Bond film. Heineken had an extended deal with Sony that also included having there product placed through out the Bond film. This is known as product placement and is a form of advertising used by many companies to get there product seen. This deal would be that Bond would trade his signature Vodka Martini (shaken not stirred) for a cool bottle of Heineken Beer, this upset some fans as they said it didn't fit bonds character however truth is the deal helped Sony finance the film as a lot of the money for the production came from this product placement. This meant the film got more money and overall could be made to a better standard. Heineken is a good product tie in for the Bond franchise as the two products target audiences overlap, Skyfall and Bonds main audience is Males over the age of 18 as is Heineken.
As well as this Tom Ford became the official suit for James Bond he can be seen wearing them in the film and Tom Ford suits used it to sell there suits during the release of Skyfall. This lead to an increase in demand for Tom Ford suits as many men recognise Bonds coolness meaning they are likely to buy a product he endorses, this was the same for the Omega Seamaster watches which became Bonds official watch.
An advert that was ran for Skyfall and James Bond could be seen on the Visit Britain website, the official tourism website for the UK. Visit Britain teamed up with Skyfall and James Bond in order to promote tourism in the UK, using James Bond to get people to come to Britain. This is synergy as Skyfall and Visit Britain benefited from this, Visit Britain got to run a cool James Bond themed advert on there website with the slogan 'Bond is Great Britain' and Skyfall got publicity from it.
Publicity
One of the key roles of marketing and advertising teams is to help a film gain publicity. This can be done in a number of ways from releasing trailers to having the cast and crew appear on talk shows to discuss the film and also publicity stunts. One example of a 'publicity stunt' carried out for Skyfall is the films tie in to the London 2012 Olympics, more specifically the video staring Daniel Craig as James Bond that was used during the opening ceremony in which Bond escorts The Queen to the Olympic stadium and then sees them parachute in to the stadium during the live ceremony itself. Obviously the Queen and Bond themselves didn't actually parachute into the stadium but it was a good way to introduce the Queen to the Olympics and a great advertising ploy to get people talking about the latest Bond film; Skyfall.
Hype
Another marketing strategy used to gain publicity is building hype and getting people excited for the release of your film. This can be done by releasing trailers, teasers and carefully leaking information about the film. Hype is generated so that by the time the film is exhibited people are excited and cannot wait to go and see the film. Skyfall did this with a clever release schedule during 2011 and 2012. They announced the full cast and crew November 3rd 2011 four days before production, this got people talking about the film for the first time, then in 2012 on the 1st of May the first teaser was revealed. Next Daniel Craig appears with Queen during the Olympic opening ceremony in London, making people talk about the film some more. Four days later again the second trailer is dropped generating even more conversation about the film. Then two months later the official US trailer is shown once again getting people to talk about the film and finally in October Adele is announced as the official artist for Skyfall on the 1st of October 25 days before the film is released, the song blows up and creates a massive intrest in the film once again this time just before it it premièred. This slow build up of information about the film helps get the audience excited and keeps them talking about and spreading word of the film all the way up to its release.
Target Market Research
Like with any film it was very important for the producers of Skyfall to get there target market right in order to assure that the film is aimed at the correct people. For the producers of Skyfall it would have been very easy for them to see who their target audience was as the film is part of a long standing franchise with an already established target audience. The target audience for Skyfall was Males mainly over the age of 18, however the film was made to accommodate the younger viewers as well by reducing violence and foul language so that a larger group of people can view it at the cinema. The reason that the target audience for Skyfall is males over the age of 18 is because the film is of an action-thriller genre and market research such as analytics, focus groups and surveys will have helped Skyfalls marketing team identify that the action-thriller genre is most popular with males who happen to be over 18. Bond is huge in Britain and all over the world, which is why the Olympic games was such a good place to advertise Bond at as it was hosted in Britain and watched my millions around the entire world.
Conclusion
To conclude I believe that Skyfalls marketing strategy worked well and was very effective. The producers ensured that their film was known about well before release, using various methods such as product tie ins and publicity stunts in order to generate interest and hype in the film. They ensured that these advertisements and tie ins were aimed at the correct audience by advertising places the whole world would see such as the Olympic games.
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