Media Campaigns Research

In 2018, Marvel released their biggest movie yet, "Avengers:Infinity War". Due to this, they invested a lot of time and money into advertising for the movie. The very first teaser for the movie was revealed in 2014, 4 years before release, at a Marvel event. The trailer was made up of clips from all the Marvel movies so far, with the ending showing the movies main villain, Thanos, and then the reveal of the movie title, Infinity War. This was just a small teaser, but it created a large amount of hype after fan recordings from the crowd were leaked to youtube and other social media sites. Many articles were written about the trailer, but besides from the reveal of a fan-favourite villain, there wasn't anything else to go off.

In July 2017, Marvel revealed more teaser footage for Avengers:Infinity War, far in advance to the release date. Before Infinity War, Marvel were releasing Thor:Ragnarok and Guardians Of The Galaxy Volume 2. Due to this, they featured the main characters of these movies together in the trailer in a very prominent scene, implying you need to see all three upcoming movies for certain things to make sense, and making them all seem important and monumental. This ensure fans of the other movies will see Infinity war, and people planning on just seeing Infinity War will feel the need to watch the other movies for context.

Things for Infinity War went quiet for a while, as Marvel focused on marketing their other movies to be released before it. When all those movies were out of the way, people were expecting a new trailer. On November 28th 2017, Marvel released a very simple yet very effective teaser poster, done similarly in style to the previous teasers for the other 2 Avengers movies.

This alone started a lot of media coverage and online buzz, as the release date to the film had now been made official. Then a day after, Marvel released their first International trailer for Infinity War to YouTube and television. In its first 24 hours online, across all sites, the trailer was viewed 230 million times an the YouTube upload of the trailer currently sits a 219 million views.The trailer was posted on Marvel's site, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and more, ensuring that many people saw it. Marvel took advantage of their massive online presence to really push the trailer, and it worked. Then theres the fact that it was also shown on different popular TV spots. Regardless, the trailer was a success and was one of the top trends worldwide on twitter upon its release, with the majority of people talking about this specific scene shown in the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZfuNTqbHE8

Shortly after the release of the trailer, Marvel decided to release many individual character posters. This was done to show the cast members in an effective and unique way. It showed the sheer size and spectacle of the movie, since there was 22 main character posters released. Each poster shared a similar layout and aesthetic style to make it obvious that they shared a link, and it also made them mesh well when put together.

To go with this, Marvel went on to release the official movie poster for the release of Infinity War, featuring all main characters from the individual posters and more. The poster was stacked with many recognisable actors and characters, yet presented cleanly. This allowed it to be clear for children, adults, and older people, making it accessible to everyone. In the centre of the poster is Robert Downey Jr as Iron Man, arguably both the biggest actor and biggest character in the movie. Him being front and centre is due to his recognisability, so people will know what the poster is for simply from a glance, and they will be attracted to it if they are interested. 

In the lead up to release, Marvel released a lot of merchandise for Infinity War. One of the most notable things they released was a line of Pop Vinyl figurines. This was effective since pop Vinyls are very popular items, and are always featuring different figures from all around pop culture. This is aimed well to a specific part of the audience, who will likely be pop culture fanatics. The figurines also appeal to children due to their cartoonish nature and resemblance to toys. Main characters were used for the figurines, once again showing off the roster and ensuring people will purchase the merchandise by making it feature recognizable properties.

Another type of merchandise released to generate hype for the movie were clothes, most commonly T-Shirts. T-Shirts are effective for marketing since they feature recognisable characters, therefore attracting fans to the shirt design. People wearing these outside is also good advertising for Marvel as they are keeping the film in peoples minds when they see it.

Overall, I would say that the marketing for this film was immensely successful. This is due to the fact that the film made $2.048 billion at the box office. While the budget was estimated to be a whopping $350 million, the box office still absolutely blows it out of the water and brings in a huge profit. The film was also a massive critical success, with an 8.5/10 on IMDB and an 85% on Rotten Tomatoes. These scores would't have been possible if not as many people had been to see it, which is a direct result from the media campaigns and advertising leading up to the films release.