Anjali-Media AS: Case study

The Dark Knight Rises

Release date: 20^th July 2012 (UK cinema) December 4^th 2012 (UK DVD)

· Genre: Action/Drama/Crime

· Running time: 165 minutes

· Distribution companies: Warner Bros. Pictures

· Budget: $250-$300 million

· Worldwide gross: $1,081,041,287

· Director: Christopher Nolan

· Main actors: Christian Bale, Anne Hathaway, Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Michael Caine

Release technique: Front loading

This is when the film is expected to make most of its revenue in week one. Trailers are put on most channels 10 days before the movie is released and this makes the audience go and watch the movie on the opening weekend.

Marketing-

Posters, trailers on TV, teaser trailers online. Theatrical trailers, these were shown when The Avengers was out in cinema as they wanted as many people to see the trailer because they knew many people would go to see the Avengers.

There was a viral campaign for the film with the use of digital guerrilla marketing. This was presented as a Gotham City police investigation. Batman graffiti was planted all around the world for individuals to find. These were posted on twitter by the fans and these people got to see the third trailer for Batman before it premiered.

On twitter- there was an ‘operation early bird’@thefirerises, this was a countdown to the film’s release.

The official website was launched in May 2011 introducing a viral marketing campaign which was used to promote 'The Dark Knight' as well. The website streamed an encrypted audio file described by users as chanting. Users decrypted the audio to the Twitter hashtag, "#TheFireRises". Warner Bros. removed a pixel from the webpage for every tweet using the hashtag. The website revealed the first official image of Bane.

The Fake police investigation as a marketing technique.

Synergy-

Mountain Dew the drink sponsored The Dark Knight. Codes were found on the mountain dew caps for unlocking prizes as a competition. Nascar was also a way to promote the film and mountain dew as the racing cars had pictures of both all over them. An American football teams field was used in the film, this promoted their team, ‘Pittsburgh Steelers’.