Tag: Marvel Studios

Weekly Best in Movie Marketing - Severance & Avengers: Doomsday
Weekly Best in Movie Marketing: ‘Severence’ and ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

Weekly Best in Movie Marketing: ‘Severence’ and ‘Avengers: Doomsday’

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Hello! Welcome to the fifth blog post in my series, ‘Weekly Best in Movie Marketing‘. In this series, I highlight my favourite movie marketing initiatives from the week in my book. I also explain why they stand out to me.

In this article, I’ll discuss the offline and online promotions for the Apple TV‘s American science fiction psychological thriller television series, ‘Severance‘ and the Marvel Studios‘ American superhero film, ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘.

Pop-up Marketing for ‘Severance‘ in London:

Before the start of ‘Severance‘ season 2, Apple TV released a video showcasing the series-themed pop-up installation inside the Grand Central Station, New York City, to promote the thriller.

The promotional video was titled ‘Think inside the box‘. I enjoyed the concept and its execution!

With season 2 concluding on March 21, 2025, Apple TV has released a new video showcasing their engagement efforts with fans through a pop-up event in London. The video features actors dressed in corporate workplace attire, similar to characters from ‘Severance‘. They carry clusters of signature blue balloons adorned with the face of Mark S. (the character portrayed by Adam Scott in ‘Severance’) as they walk through the city.

As they stroll past notable London landmarks, including Tower Bridge, Big Ben, The London Eye, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Trafalgar Square, the blue color of the balloons complements the structure of Tower Bridge and the water features in Trafalgar Square, as noted by Deadline. Eventually, the group arrives at a location where a giant balloon-like installation is positioned.

As the actors walked around the installation, the ‘Severance’ theme song was played, and an excited user posted the same on ‘X‘. The cast of ‘Severance‘, including Adam Scott, Britt Lower, Zach Cherry, Tramell Tillman, Gwendoline Christie and the creator Dan Erickson, then pop up from among the swarm of actors and greet the fans.

Watch the video below…

The Roaring Success of Marvel‘s Livestream for the Cast Announcement of ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘ Movie:

The Super Bowl trailer of ‘Deadpool & Wolverine‘ from last year is currently the most viewed trailer of all time. But the long live stream that Marvel Studios conducted this week is 5 times more than the social volume of the former, as per Deadline.

The live stream was intended to announce the cast of ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘. A total of 27 chairs, each marked with the name of a character, were revealed. Every 15 minutes or so, a new chair was showcased. Robert Downey Jr., who was announced for ‘Avengers: Doomsday‘ as the villain Doctor Doom at Comic-Con (A fan convention conducted at San Diego) in July 2024, appeared as the last member, and the only person in the cast announcement in the live stream. While the audience had mixed feelings about the lengthy duration of the event, Marvel Studios‘ efforts resulted in 275 million digital views and 3.1 million mentions on social media. The hashtag #AvengersDoomsDay trended at the top of Twitter/X for over seven hours, and after 24 hours, the official Marvel YouTube live stream reached the #2 spot on trending.

The excitement surrounding the live stream led many contemporary movie franchises to join in. Here are a few examples…

Here are some positive comments from social media about the live stream…

Marvel Studios’ hard work not only dominated conversations for a time. It also sparked ongoing discussions among fans about the characters and actors yet to be announced. This excitement is largely due to Marvel Studios teasing another upcoming cast announcement.

What YouTube Marketing Lessons can one learn from ‘DC’ and ‘Marvel’

What YouTube Marketing Lessons can one learn from ‘DC’ and ‘Marvel’

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Untitled collage
A collage featuring photos from ‘Justice League’ (Above) and ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ (Below) (Image Source: DC Entertainment and Marvel Studios)

Of late, in 2018, I could see a considerable number of deliberations going around in online, in favor of video when it comes to online contents. YouTube seems to be the go-to video platform for certain brands especially in cases where the brands target a younger audience. Also, YouTube seems to have a leg up on other video-viewing platforms as it has a more established ad monetization system.

So, when I was casually going through some write-ups in the online space concerning YouTube Marketing and assimilating ideas as mentioned above, a thought just did spark my mind. The thought is on the similarities that exist between the working of ‘DC Entertainment’ and ‘Marvel Studios’ in rendering superhero movies and the usage of YouTube as a marketing platform by brands. You will get to know more about my underlying thoughts as we deep dive further into the article. Now, let us start taking a look at my thoughts one-by-one.

Focus on creating video series to cultivate viewership:

‘DC Entertainment’ and ‘Marvel Studios’ have been producing series of super hero films based on characters that appear in their respective publications. The efforts of these two production companies are keeping their audiences engaged over a period of time.

Likewise, brands like ‘Refinery29’ (An American digital media and entertainment company focusing on young women) are creating a series of videos, relevant to their business, in their YouTube channels. In the second half of 2017, ‘Refinery29’ created a series of videos with the goal of cultivating a regular viewership.

Explain dense topics in serialized videos:

‘DC Entertainment’ and ‘Marvel Studios’ unite their respective superheroes and render ‘Justice League’ movie and ‘Avengers’ movie series respectively. At the same time, they are also making movies that are exclusively centered on a particular superhero character. In such movies, they depict the backstory of the superhero. Thereby, they lay a firm foundation around a character among the audience. While watching ‘Justice League’ movie and ‘Avengers’ movie series, this approach helps the audience… helps in understanding on ‘why’ and ‘how’ the superheroes gathered together and what makes them special as an individual.

In the similar way, when a brand has got to explain dense topics to its audience, it can explain them in serialized videos. ‘Financial Times’ has created a series of videos to explain dense topics like blockchain or Cryptocurrencies. As per the report of Digiday, it seems like the videos explaining dense topics are driving a high click-through rate.

Also, serialized videos ensure that your audience comes in contact with your brand on various occasions. This is what ‘Financial Times’ estimates, which is, its readers come in contact with the brand between six and eight times before subscribing to it.

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Split up video contents into verticals to target more specific audience:

There are some movies of DC and Marvel that had or seem to be having sequels. In this case, the fans of such movies will feel excited when announcements on those movies pop up in media. They get driven in a state of ecstasy to catch with those movies soon after their theatrical release. Here, one could see the audience getting consolidated under the umbrella of a particular superhero character.

In the same way, you could split up your video contents into verticals in your YouTube channel. Thereby, you could hope to target a specific audience more. ‘Financial Times’ has its video contents split into various verticals such as ‘FT Life’ and ‘FT Transact’, in its official YouTube channel. The videos in ‘FT Life’ provide coverage on arts, style, travel and food and drink .Whereas, the videos in ‘FT Transact’ focuses on the future of finance.

Deliver a subject in multiple formats:

In spite of producing live-action films, DC and Marvel produce animated films too. Wherein, most of them are released direct-to-video. The companies sense an opportunity in showcasing their contents in multiple formats and they deliver the same.

In a like manner, a subject could be delivered in a range of videos like short explainer videos, news-related quick videos and longer mini-documentaries. Going by the ‘Digiday’ article, ‘The Financial Times is splitting up videos into verticals’, I affirm that ‘Financial Times’ had leveraged these video formats in an effective manner in covering the 2017 French and U.K. Elections.

Leverage YouTube End screens to cross promote your contents:

Recently, when I went to watch ‘Black Panther’ in theatre, trailers of ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ and ‘Ant-Man and the Wasp’ were screened. This practice of promoting the upcoming Marvel movies by showcasing their trailers to the audience who have come to the theatre to watch ‘Black Panther’ is what I term a simple illustration of the marketing technique, ‘Cross Promotion’.

Similarly, you could leverage options like YouTube End screens to cross promote your website to your YouTube audience. Thereby, you enable a gateway for your YouTube audience to help you grow your referral traffic to your site via the video-viewing platform. Also, you could point your viewers to other videos, playlists or channels on YouTube and introduce call for subscriptions to your YouTube channel.

To promote their superheroes, ‘DC Entertainment’ and ‘Marvel Studios’ seem to be spending a lot of time, money and effort. Likewise, to reach one’s business goal, one has to invest a considerable amount of time, money and effort based on the scale of the business.

I hope you found the ideas, which have been mentioned above, to be useful. Let me know your thoughts on my opinions!

What Black Panther teaches about ‘Grassroots Marketing on Social Media’

What Black Panther teaches about ‘Grassroots Marketing on Social Media’

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Black Panther Portrait
Image Source: Marvel Studios

Recently, I happened to read the article, ‘Grassroots Marketing in the Age of Social Media’. I could relate many aspects in it with Marvel Studios’ marketing efforts for ‘Black Panther’. So, I have come up with this article by jotting down my observations. Now, let us take a look at the efforts and the corresponding takeaways:

1. Understand your audience:

In Grassroots Marketing, it is of primary importance to understand your audience.

On the day of Black Panther‘s release, ‘Captain Marvel‘ star Brie Larson tweeted as below

This tweet based on the theme, ‘Pay it forward‘ did sound striking. Thereby, it generated a considerable number of comments, retweets and likes.

To come up with a campaign and result as mentioned above, you have to understand your audience.

Takeaways:

To understand your audience,

i) Know whether your audiences are available in social media

ii) In case, if they are, know which platforms (g.: Facebook, Twitter etc.,) they are using and are active on

iii) Know the person who can spur a grassroots marketing campaign for your product or service

(Here, the person could be a celebrity or an influencer)

iv) Engage your audience, using the person, in a way that relates to your product or service

2. Mobilize your audience:

When you have a considerable audience, you need to engage them via various activities. In other words, you need to mobilize your audience. Marvel Studios knows this.

Before the release of ‘Black Panther’, Twitter and Marvel hosted a live-stream Q&A with the cast and crew of the movie. To make fans join the conversation, Twitter provided the hashtag, ‘#BlackPantherLive’.

And, Tumblr conducted its first-ever video ‘AnswerTime’ with the cast of ‘Black Panther’.

Besides, Marvel is encouraging fans to submit their Black Panther arts to it in social media. It is offering them the hashtag, ‘#BlackPantherFanArt’ to share their artworks. This campaign of Marvel has been receiving a lot of submissions. The arts are being shared in the official social media pages of ‘Black Panther’ by crediting the fans.

Also, Marvel is making fans to share the photos of them dressed up in Wakanda-esque costumes. For this campaign, it provides them the hashtag, ‘#WakandaStyle’. Marvel posted few of such photos in the social media channels of ‘Black Panther’.

Takeaways:

To mobilize the considerable number of audience that you have,

i) Conduct light-hearted events related to your business in popular social networks (g. Facebook, Twitter)

ii) Encourage them to involve in the events by providing customized hashtags

iii) Leverage video features of popular social media to showcase events like Q&A sessions… sessions about your product or service

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3. Encourage your audience to speak out about your product or service:

Another important Grassroots Marketing approach is to encourage your audience to speak out… speak out about your product or service.

Marvel created customized Twitter Emojis for certain ‘Black Panther‘ characters… for characters like ‘Black Panther‘, ‘Nakia‘, ‘Kill Monger‘, ‘Shuri‘, and ‘Okoye‘. And, it encouraged the fans of ‘Black Panther’ to tweet the name of their favorite character from the movie… name preceded by a hashtag.

Also, the fans were asked to share their favourite track on Black Panther album.

And, Marvel prompted the fans to take part in a sweepstakes contest. It encouraged them to share their favourite Black Panther memory or their personal photo using the hashtag, ‘#Marvel10YearSweepstakes’. Here, Marvel advertised that the fans might get a chance to win a trip to ‘Avengers: Infinity War’ premiere.

Takeaways:

To encourage your audience to speak out about your product or service,

i) Conduct contests with announcements about a chance to win prizes

ii) Make them speak out about product or service as part of the contests

iii) Start simple conversations as Marvel did of fans’ favorite character and track

With these grassroots efforts on social media, Marvel has generated a buzz for its movie. In turn, this has helped in upping the Black Panther‘s prospects at box-office in a notable manner.

So, tailor the campaigns of Marvel for ‘Black Panther‘ to suit your product or service needs. And, enhance your business prospects.