Campaign effectiveness

Before a film is released, there is typically a campaign to promote the film and raise awareness to the potential viewers of the film. To do this, companies may use many different promotional materials to advertise their film.

However, to make the campaign truly effective, it is widely accepted to make the campaign products related through some form so that we can instantly associate the product with the film.

Inception's promotion campaign was, in my opinion, a particularly effective promotion campaign. Here are some of the products the campaign had to advertise the film:

Poster:

In this poster we can see the film name, Inception. It is all in capital letters, and in a blood red colour. The colour scheme in the poster is in a blue hue. Blue is a colour which can represent solemnity and also sadness. The use of this colour helps the viewer understand the key emotions in the film before they have even watched it. There is little detail about the film displayed in the poster, helping to create an enigma. By creating a mystery about the film, it will potentially create a hype over the film and get people talking about the film. We can also see that this film could be a thriller film through the iconography and setting. The characters are all wearing suits, and some wielding guns. Also, the setting seems to be an urban city, with tall buildings and cars surrounding the characters.

Magazine cover:

We can instantly see similarities between the magazine cover and the poster. Whether that is in the block capital and blood red film title, in the blue hue, or even in the typical thriller iconography of suits and guns. Another subtle similarity is in the distorted background, which seems almost like it is being sucked backwards.

Trailers:

Teaser trailer:

In the teaser trailer we can still see the iconography and settings remaining similar, and we can see the consistent use of the same font as the film title had in the poster and magazine cover. It uses the same block style font in full capitals. The film name is not shown in the blood red this time however, as the name is embedded into the surrounding (and similar) buildings as the camera zooms out from the setting. We also see a slight difference in the colours. It is no longer always a blue hue, but still keeps a generally consistent, darker tone to the trailer.

Theatrical trailer:

The theatrical trailer is typically released as one of the last advertisement products, as it gives the most information about the film. By the time the theatrical trailer is released, the advertisement campaign aims to have established the elements that the audience can connect to the film. Such as the block capital font, the dark colours, and the iconography. In the theatrical trailer, we can see these elements presenting themselves, but we can also see much more entering the trailer. We can hear character voices, we see more scenes in the film, the plot is now being elucidated, and more importantly, the release date is now revealed. The enigma created in the advertisement campaign is now starting to be broken down slightly as the film approaches it's release date, and this helps make the viewers want to find out more information, hopefully leading to them wanting to watch the film.

Overall, I would say the advertisement campaign Inception had was extremely effective in achieving what was desired, and used many techniques to achieve this.