AO1 - Analysing the marketing mix of The Debt

As part of researching marketing campaigns of an existing media product, I will be analysing the marketing campaign for "The Debt" (2011), starring Helen Mirren, Sam Worthington and directed by John Madden. Despite an extensive media campaign to generate revenue, the film wasn't classed as a 'blockbuster', although it gained fair and positive reviews. The studio that produced, "The Debt" was "Marv Films", and the film was distributed by "Focus Features" and "Mirimax Films" and was released in cinemas in the US on 31 August 2011. I chose to analyse the marketing mix for "The Debt" as it's target market and audience demographic were not my peer group.

"The Debt" made use of a full print marketing campaign, full of cinema posters, advertisements in papers and magazines and posters that could be seen on billboards, bus stops, etc. One such poster can be seen above. To seperate the film, and to possibly appeal to different demographics on either side of the Atlantic, the film used several different posters for different countries. The French release poster can be seen above too.

The main theatrical poster was designed by Empire Designs, who specialise in the horror and thriller genre, so it could be possible that the design was part of the genre iconography the film producers wanted to create and promote.

Something that I find particularly interesting in the differences in the two posters is that the French poster looks much more like the movie is a thriller, compared to that of the first one where it looks much more conservative and adult - whereas the first one looks like a stereotyped James Bond film. The print promotions also continued in America, where it follows the same kind of format as the UK promotional poster, with a landscape version instead.

Following from this, the media campaign in terms of motion picture was also extensive, with cinematic and TV trailers released in 2010. The trailer above is 2.50minutes long and aims to capture the excitement and genre codes and conventions in order to grab the attention of it's target audience. I think the trailer fits well with the print campaign as they both follow a house style of tinted pictures, vignette borders with blur and shadows to create an enigmatic and suspenseful feeling about the film.