Today’s Film Review ｜ How important is film marketing in the first three days of release？

Special feature of 1905 film network In 2023, a large number of summer movies gathered, including Barbie, Mission Impossible 7: Fatal Liquidation … … Whether it is domestic or imported films, IP adaptation or original animation, it has won considerable box office and reputation. Under the fierce market competition, the speed of film renewal and elimination becomes faster. Three days is enough for a film to burst into vitality, but it is also enough for it to sink to the bottom of the sea.

The first three days of the film’s release is an important moment for the film to enter the cinema to meet the public and initially accept the market test. It is also a golden period for the film to accumulate word of mouth, strive for film arrangement and marketing positioning, which is very important for the box office trend of the film in the later period.

Word of mouth "golden period"

For some films, life and death can even be decided three days before the release.

The first one is that after a long period of preliminary preparation, the public has certain expectations for the film, but they are more uneasy about the film effect. This year’s summer file, "Feng Shen Part I: Song of the Wind" and "He" are typical representatives.

These two films are becoming the positive and negative sides of word of mouth. Although the series of deities has almost become synonymous with "bad movies" in the film market in recent years, it has rushed out of a bloody road with nine years of hard work and the box office has fallen many times; However, the number of people who wanted to see "Super Family" exceeded one million before its release, but it failed to stand the test of the film market in the first three days. It plunged after July 21st and never recovered.

The second kind, mainly small and medium-sized films, which are not well understood by the audience, will not trigger a large-scale wave of watching movies three days before the release, but the quality of word of mouth can determine whether it comes from behind or disappears, such as Barbie and Tea No.2 Middle School.

The "golden period" of filming

On the first day of the release, the film arrangement of the cinema refers to marketing, cass and market expectations.

However, the first three days of the film release are the observation period of market feedback, and its word-of-mouth and attendance rate will greatly determine the later film arrangement.

The screening rate of Barbie on the first day of its release was only 2.4%, and most of them were late-night shows. However, on the third day of the release, the Weibo entry # Barbie rushed to the second place in the overall list and rushed to the hot search, with a reading volume of 760 million. Thanks to the continuous blessing of word-of-mouth and popularity, the number of films in the later period of Barbie rose to nearly 10%, and it took only six days to break through 100 million in the mainland market.

Some teams will choose to extend the "golden period" by large-scale screening. "octagonal cage" has been screened more than half a month ahead of schedule, with a box office of over 400 million, and has been "screened" to the premiere, surpassing the box office record in the history of film, and obtaining good market feedback. Under the "criminal record" of word of mouth, "In the Octagonal Cage" still won itself a high screening rate of 25.9% on the first day, and yesterday it became the 31st film in China’s film history to break 2 billion.

Marketing "golden period"

In this case, the announcement of the first three days is naturally the top priority!

One of the important reasons why the box office is so successful is that the short video team has been following from the set to the post-screening. The actors are still filming, and the short video team is already thinking about how to create.

The release of "Feng Shen I" made fans sweat. Fantasy movies were a hot topic ten years ago, but the continuous word-of-mouth failure made the audience suspicious. The movies with the theme of deification are even more cold in succession, such as Legend of Deification, New Deification of Jiang Ziya and Deification of Yang Jian … … The theme has also become a cliche. Since then, visual effects can no longer be the anchor of the box office. If "Feng Shen" is still working hard on marketing 3 billion costs and spending 10 years to pay off debts, it may arouse the resentment of the audience.

Barbie is the dark horse of summer marketing. Wearing Barbie powder to watch movies has become a fashion this summer, and feminism has also become a circle culture. When the pink storm is fermenting in real life, co-branding has also become a new way to break the circle of movies. Holiland, Mingyoupin, Chow Tai Fook, Ke Laqi, Burger King, ZARA, Crocs, GAP and other brands have launched a series of products co-branded with Barbie, which has caused a rush of punching cards and buying, driving the box office of Barbie to continue to rise.

Film marketing requires altruistic thinking to meet the needs of the audience. The slogan of "Feng Shen I", "You and I are together, and the lower part can get out quickly", is to imitate the voting craze of the draft from the audience’s perspective, create a "nurturing department" film, and successfully make a comeback on the third day of release. However, although the first day of the box office was cold due to the lack of pre-marketing, Barbie put feminism on the topic the next day and redefined the audience as "a new era woman with a certain economic level and awakening consciousness (and her boyfriend? ) ",played a good hand.

Although the market performance in the first three days is crucial, the creative team should not pay one-sided attention to short-term achievements.

In the first three days of the film’s release, we should take the road of long-term screening on the basis of winning a certain market space, so that "watching first" can drive "watching later" and attract the box office to continue to exert its strength.

China’s film market is picking up, and the total box office of summer movies in 2023 has exceeded 12 billion. Only by grasping the three-day "golden period" of film release and turning a single game into multiple games can China audiences and China filmmakers have confidence in the market.