Marketing

"Successful media products depend as much upon marketing and distribution to a specific audience as they do upon good production practices." To what extent do you agree with this statement within the media area you have studied?

I will use my two case studies as references for this question- Shaun of the Dead for my British film, and Dawn of the Dead (2004) for Hollywood.

For my Hollywood film, the marketing budget was around $10 million and for Shaun of the dead it was between $1-2 million. This straight away shows how Hollywood films are prioritised, as both films had the same distribution company and were due to be released around similar times during the year 2004. Shaun of the Dead use an American distribution company as massive Hollywood conglomerates obviously have the advantage over smaller independent companies because they have the money and can use cross-media convergence/vertical integration (using other companies they either own or have ties to promote the film across a range of media platforms e.g. Disney owns a studio, a TV channel, publishes a magazine, and produces merchandise) to launch massive synergy with ease.
It's important for the film to be marketed correctly so as to attract their target audience and maximise their box office. According to Forbes and Street (2000) the majority of spectators just want to be entertained by "deliberately escapist" cinema and Hollywood provides this with "transparent, easy to read, goal-orientated narratives structured around closure" while art cinema films are "psychologically complicated where reality is ambiguous and subjective."
These films appeal to a minority (stereotypically education older viewers in social grades A-C1) but not the masses. As Berfelder (2005) this has lead to European cinema being "accused of elitism."
In other words, stereotypically the British film industry is making artist challenging films for a niche market and not commercial films that fulfill the needs of the 'mass audience' who find the content of 'art' films too challenging and depressing. Also, because most 'art' films are low budget the image quality is not as good as Hollywood films viewers that just want to be entertained do not feel their needs are being represented (Forbes and Street, 2000).
It is important to remember Britain, though they are having to team up with Hollywood companies to do it, are starting to produce commercial films for mass audiences (the Harry Potter and James Bond Franchises being perfect examples) and this is not having a negative impact on art-films as these are still getting made catering for the needs of 'niche' audiences who do not enjoy simplistic Hollywood films that only represent "straight, middle class white audiences' (Medhurst, 1997). Dowey (2003) feels that the UK should start to produce more commercial products but should not stop producing art-cinema productions; "It is now widely accepted that the European film industry needs commercial products generated in Europe" profits generated from movies that deliver what the mass audience wants in terms of entertainment, genre and formula can then be used to invest in and promote art cinema productions.
It is important to remember that not only do films considered to be 'art' give niche audiences want they want to see (and why shouldn't everyone have films pitched at them?) but also;
"Films that were popular at the box office but not much admired by critics tended to be forgotten in History which attempted to emphasis European cinema as a superior alternative to Hollywood" (Forbes and Street, 2000).
Keen to encourage the financial growth of the British film industry, David Cameron stated that he feels the British film industry needs to become more commercially minded and be supported to; "Start making more commercially successful pictures" (2012).

Shaun of the Dead, disadvantaged with the smaller budget only made a few promotional posters and one trailer. A selling point for their film was their two star vehicles- Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. A campaign was planned across a diverse selection of media, including posters, press and ambient spots in pubs. Media was selected with the young male focus in mind - radio stations Xfm, Kerrang!, Virgin and talkSPORT, as well as press ads in Zoo Weekly, Nuts, Bizarre and NME. Viral emails launched two days after the premiere. This coincided with online ads on sites including thesun.co.uk and FHM.com.

Dawn of the Dead had a lot more posters and trailers released, but their advertisement didn't revolve around showing off their star vehicles as they weren't that well known. Dawn of the Dead could also rely on people recognising the title as a remake of the original film, for their marketing. Hollywood as a major advantage due to how much more money it has. This is why my two films both used American distributors- British distribution companies just don't have enough money to distribute films, especially globally. Despite using the same company, the American film was given a much larger distribution budget. 
I think that marketing is just as important as production- your movie, even if it's production is amazing, will make no profit if no one knows about it. I do, however, believe that the incredible amount of money spent on distribution is unnecessary due to the fact that social media exists and can promote films for free. It can be particularly effective if a bigger budget is spent on production for a well known celebrity, an example of using the celebrity's social media is Fast and Furious, who posted the trailer on Vin Diesel's Facebook page. Viral marketing could really help level the playing field, as companies with a bigger budget may not necessarily have as much of an advantage as they currently do. The distribution budget recently tends to be 1/2 of the production budget. Dawn of the Dead spent around $10 million and had a box office of $102.4 million, whilst Shaun of the Dead spent around $1-2 million and had a box office of $30 million.