Post-Release (July, 2011--- the end of presenting)
Public Activities.
When Transformers 3 is released, reviews of the movie will appear on the internet. Paramount should take this chance to built the movie’s official “answer question” area on the movie’s official website. The director may answer some really tough question directly, in order to shorten the distance between the creators and audience. Especially when some bad reviews appear, the creators of Transformers should reply to their complaints. The potential audience may think that they can ask question after watching it, and may get response from the famous person. Consequently, there will be more and more people go to the theaters, which may help the movie company obtain a high box office after the first period of hot releasing. This is a strategy which can attract more people to go to see the film, because it breaks the stereotype (Allport, 1954) that the big figures are not easy to contact.
Meanwhile, Paramount should hold a formal writing competition. The writings can be any generals, such as reviews, thoughts, or if the audience doesn’t like the ending of the story he can make his own endings, and so forth. Paramount collects all the articles and uploads them on the movie’s official website, and invite audiences vote for the top one. The cycle of this activity should be two weeks. The writer of top article of each cycle can gain a prize, which can be a limited edition transformers toy or other limited souvenirs. This could be reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) between audience and the movie company. When the writers get prizes, they may tell their friends and convince them to watch the movies.
There is no denying that, Transformers 3 is a blockbuster, according to the box office of previous two movies, there will be people waiting in the long line at least first days. The company should take advantage of this scene. The staff of the campaign should take pictures of a lot of people waiting in the lines outside the movie theaters, and then show the picture on the news with saying that “tickets of Transformers 3 are so popular that some moviegoers can even not get a ticket”. Based on scarcity (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) theory, more people will come to see the film.
Questionnaire.
This survey method is not only needed in the pre-release period, but also necessary in the post-release period. The questions will be simpler than the previous one. It will include questions like: Do you like the movie? Do you think Transformers 3 is better than Transformers 2? And the most important question is the last question --- Do you want to recommend your friends to come? If the audience’s answer is “yes”, this means he makes a commitment, so he is more likely to recommend Transformers 3 to his friends. This is the application of Foot-in-the-door (Freedman & Fraser, 1966) tactic.
Marketing for Foreign Box Office.
According to Box Office Mojo (2009), Transformers 2’s foreign revenue was $434,185,358, which accounted 51.9% of the total gross, which means more than half of the total revenue is from the markets outside the U.S. Not only is domestic box office important, but also foreign revenue is crucial. The data from Box Office Mojo shows the highest box office of foreign countries (areas) were United Kingdom and Ireland and Malta, which was $44,383,558; the second place was taken by South Korea, which was $43,392,124, followed by China with $33,723,108; and Australia took the fourth place, the revenue was $33,554,033; and the last one of top five was Japan, which had a revenue of $22,707,567. The data clearly shows that U.K and Asia (pacific) are the most important areas where the people will contribute money to the movie company. Aim to these big markets: U.K, Korea, China, Australia and Japan, some of the chief creators such as director and leading actor, actress should go to these countries to attend their local premiere, be interviewed by big local media, and hold meetings with fans as well. The more they exposure to the local audiences, the more people will go to watch the movie.
Tracking of the Campaign
The tracking of questionnaire depends on whether the audiences leave their real contact information, for example Email or telephone number. If they leave this kind of information, the staff of the campaign can give a call back to ask whether they have watched the movie and do they like it. If they give an Email address, the staff of the campaign can send an Email like a reminder, which will read “There are only 10 days left for the presenting of Transformers 3, if you haven’t watched it, hurry up, don’t miss the last chance. But if you have watched it, do you like it? ” This kind of Email takes advantage of scarcity (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981) theory. In some situation, people may want to watch the movie, but they may be too busy with working, and forget to watch it. So the Email can be a very useful reminded. If the person has already watched it, he will reply the reminder Email and maybe give some useful reviews.
The cross promotion with Victoria’s Secret can be tracked through the consumers’ information which saved in the store’s database. For example, there is a barcode on the Transformers 3 coupon. When the coupon issued to the consumer, the sales of Victoria’s Secret should scan the coupon, so that the coupon is related to the consumer’s information. Later, when the consumer uses it in the movie theater; the staff of the cinema needs to scan it in order to get discount. Then the Victoria’s Secret store can get the information that who uses the coupon to watch Transformers 3. In this way, the effect of the cross-promotion can be tracked.
The effect of TV and radio commercial is not easy to track, because the company cannot get the information about who come to see the movie because of watching the documentaries on TV or listens to the radio. So what the campaign team can do is focusing on the audience rating from the cable company, so that they can get the information how many people watched the documentary of Transforms 3.
Internet based marketing is easily tracked, because it bases on clicks. Staff of the campaign should track the amount of clicks of the official website. Also, for the public activity writing competition, staff should record how many articles the audience upload each day and how many votes does all the audience make for one cycle of the competition. The more audiences join this competition, the more efficient of the activity, the more people is enthusiasm in Transformers 3.
Evaluation of the Campaign
The general evaluation of the campaign will be made when Transformers 3 finish presenting. The evaluation items will include how much of the total gross both domestic and overseas. The staff of the campaign should find the specific revenue for each methods of the campaign by tracking them, so that the movie company can acknowledge that how much money does the each part of the campaign contributes to the box office.