Star Wars: The Force Awakens turned out to be one of the most financially successful films of all time, but how did it manage to gain such a response?
First of all, the producer of the film, Disney, needed to identify the audience. This wasn't difficult due to Star Wars being one of the most well-known franchises in the world. Audience research, for most films, would usually be done by looking at previously released films and seeing what the reactions, interests and preferences of audiences who went to see them were. Next, audience targeting would take place, in which the producer would promote the film to the audience they had decided on. In Star Wars' case, when announced in October 2012, the news was reported worldwide meaning everyone knew and heard about it. The franchise already had its audience figured out due to a previous 6 movies so audience targeting was the priority for this production.
The movie had a huge amount of promotion, mostly due to its announcement in 2012 and the subsequent 3 year build to the release. Having 3 years to promote the film gave the production company a huge ground to work with. In this time they released several trailers, posters, had the cast go on chat shows and held press junkets for journalists to interview the cast, all allowing the film to get a major media presence in the build up.
One example of promotion on a chat show was The Graham Norton Show. On the show, a collection of cast such as John Boyega and Daisy Ridley talked about the film and why people should go and see it. As well as this clips were shown from the film to promote it even further.
A huge event for the film was the premiere in December 2015, a huge event where the film is screened for the first time to the public and there are even more press interviews and more promotion. While many premieres are held before the films general release, this one was held on the same day as the general release. This meant there were no pre-release screenings for critics to review the movie. While most reviews ended up being very positive anyway, having no reviews beforehand meant there was no influence on the audiences response to the movie other than the movie's advertising itself, meaning the audiences attitude to the movie beforehand will have been mostly positive. While reviews would be out as soon as the first day of release, the main target audience the producer was going for were the people who would have gone to midnight screenings or seen the movie within the first few days at least.
Once the film was released and critics reviewed it, they were incredibly positive. This allowed the film to be marketed by showing 5 star reviews and quotes from critics. Quotes such as “Star Wars is back, and this is just the beginning” and describing the film as an “outrageously exciting and romantic return to a world you hadn’t realised you’d missed so much”. While their main target audience probably wouldn't pay attention to this kind of thing, more general audiences seeing such overwhelmingly positive reviews might influence them to go and see them film too.
There was also a huge amount of merchandise to accompany the film such as toys, clothing etc. One product that was a big deal among fans was the Sphero BB8 Droid. This was a miniature, remote control version of the BB8 droid in the movie. It can cost upwards of £90 however sales for the product were incredibly high. This was released before the release of the movie however fans still bought the product anyway. That sums up the attitude audiences had to the film as they were so confident it would be good from what they had seen in the marketing from the producer they ended buying expensive products attached to the film. This also goes for clothing as many of the target audience bought T-shirts with the films logo on it before seeing the film. This was great for the producers of the movie because alongside their marketing, people buying T-shirts and even just talking about the movie was free advertisement.
The marketing tactics of 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' were incredibly successful and, as I previously mentioned, actually led to the film being one of the most successful films to ever be made. The film made $247,966,675 in its opening weekend box office and by the end of its theatrical run made a total of $936,662,225, breaking the all-time domestic record. A large reason for this could be the marketing that accompanied the film and the long time that was spent on it. This film is a great example of the relationship between Producers and audience.
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