Media Essay: Digital Marketing and Consumption

Digital marketing is a form of advertising and a form of production. It includes many things such as: social media, television and radio broadcast. Over the course of this year I have researched two different British production companies to analyse how they produce their content. First of all I looked at Working Title. They are a British production company who are owned by a bigger US conglomerate (NBCUniversal). They usually work with high budgets and use big stars in their leading roles. Secondly, I looked at Warp. Warp are a British Indie production company who contrast to Working Title by working with smaller budgets and making social-realist films set for the most part in the north of England.

Working Title heavily use digital marketing to advertise their content. For example, with the film ‘About a Boy’ it was advertised on television and in some cases, radio stations advertised it too. About a Boy was made in 2002 so it was too early for digital marketing such as social media sites. However, because of the enormous budget of $30m Working Title were able to advertise it to the mass market on television. By using television Working Title could easily access a wide market but for a large cost. If About a Boy was made now it would probably be marketed on places such as YouTube or Twitter but in 2002 these things were not available to Working Title. The main character in About a Boy was Hugh Grant, he will have made getting on to radio stations much easier because he is a well-known ‘house-hold’ name thus giving Working Title an advantage over other production companies such as Warp.

In recent times things such as Google ads have made digital marketing much easier for production companies as it will advertise suggested ads for free. This means smaller companies like Warp can get their film advertised for free on a website. The way Warp use digital marketing is a bit different to Working Title as they do not have the mass amounts of money that they do. Warp will create a website domain for their film and for their most recent films they will most likely have a social media page as well, this is free and also accessible to the masses. One of Warp’s most successful films, ‘Four Lions’, was marketed using social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to post the trailers and other information. Four Lion’s trailer was mainly marketed at a certain audience because they don't have the budget to market to the population that Working Title can.

The consumption of British film has changed dramatically over the years. Consumption is how the consumers are able to access the content produced by production companies such as Working Title and Warp. More specifically digital consumption includes platforms such as paid subscription based services and streaming sites such as YouTube.

Working Title’s titles are much more likely to appear on platforms like Netflix and Hulu due to the superior budgets. But most of their digital revenue will come from DVD or increasingly Blu-ray sales. This will be because of the digital camera becoming more popular with directors and producers. Working Title’s ‘The Boat That Rocked’ was released on DVD, Blu-ray and also as part of a streaming service even though it was released in 2009 which was the beginning of the rise of Blu-ray over DVD.

Similarly, Warp will distribute most of their content focusing on DVD sales. Warp don't have the budget to cover the costs of becoming established on a major subscription site such as Netflix, which is why Netflix produce a lot of their own shows to distribute to their consumers. ‘Four Lions’ was one of Warp’s highest earning films, but most of the revenue was not made through box office (although it did generate £6.9m) but instead the majority was the sales of DVDs.