February 10, 2010
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Marketing is a huge deal for movies, and a good chunk of that goes to showing the trailer for it. Seeing a movie trailer is the primary marketing tool that helps movie goers decide on whether they want to see a movie or not. What if the trailer fails to get people to want to see the movie? Can a movie rely on just actor / director guest appearances on talk shows, or promotional tie-ins to increase support?
One thing I’ve noticed recently is that when a movie is Rated-R, the marketing team just goes back to the trailer once again, and re-release it as a red band trailer and see how that goes. Although red band trailers have always been around, usually I would have to hunt it down somewhere on the internet just to see it. Nowadays though, it seems that marketing is now a little more open in releasing these trailers online. I suppose it makes sense to show a trailer with an increase in sex or violence, if the movie in question takes advantage of sex or violence. May as well show what you are really marketing right? The worst thing that could happen is that they get the same results with the red band trailer that they got with the green band trailer, nobody still wants to see the movie.
There are three upcoming movies that are perfect examples of what I’m talking about. “Kick-Ass,” “Cop Out,” and “She’s Out Of My League.” They released green band trailers first, but only seemed to have gotten a mild response from the audience, but later was able to increase anticipation for the movies via the red band trailers. In my case, I wanted to see “Kick Ass” because of what they showed at Comic-Con, and I’m seeing “Cop Out” because of Kevin Smith, so the green band trailers never really mattered to me (although it apparently did for others). The initial green band trailers for those two movies however really weren’t that great, so I was glad that the red band trailers fixed it’s problem. In the case of “She’s Out Of My League,” I wasn’t going to see that movie at all, but I am now after seeing the red band trailer.
I admit that reactions to red band trailers may vary among people, and I’m basing it mostly on the comments I’m reading from other people on the internet. It’s still a limited audience who gets to see the red band trailers, despite the easy availability of them on the web. In the end, the first weekend box office numbers will determine whether this strategy was in any way successful, and it’s going to be hard to say whether the red band trailers made any influence at all as it’s still vague at how influential internet marketing can be.
- links for the trailers below -“Kick Ass” trailer : Green Band / Red Band
“Cop Out” trailer : Green Band / Red Band
“She’s Out Of My League” trailer : Green Band / Red BandOther Red Band trailers can be seen at http://www.trailerspy.com/categories/19/Red-Band
