Immersive Marketing

Arts are an experience within themselves (Le Grice, 2001) and therefore they cannot be marketed in the traditional way that products are. For films in particular immersive marketing can be popular marketing for the art form. It has been stated that experiencing a film is about being centred in that particular and solely occupied existence (Sobchack, 1992) which creates the suspension of disbelief. Immersive marketing can be defined as interactive and permeating the everyday life of the consumer (Dickerson, 2007). Immersive marketing is often associated with modern technology, in particular augmented reality games where the audience can interact with the world, characters and story. The Hunger Games website The Capitol (2012) did this well with their campaign showing a virtual world where you could be assigned a character and each ‘district’ has a Facebook fan page. Furthermore they sold tickets to the “75^th Annual Hunger Games Reality Show” and not the movie, therefore staying within the well-known story. This allowed it’s consumers to interact with the stories of the characters and gain additional information before experiencing the art. Further to this Prometheus website of Weyland Industries (2012) also had a similar campaign playing on the idea of a fake cooperation. The consumer could become an investor and receive updates by email as to what the company’s stock was, drawing them back out of their real life and into the virtual world. It has been said that this type of experiential marketing which exists both in the real and the virtual world is “interactive, progressive [and] evolving” (Tyan & McKenchnie, 2009). These campaigns are not the only one of their kind, many other blockbuster films have a large virtual presence, with Augmented Reality Games becoming a large part of that.

An argument could be made that immersive marketing is simply transmedia marketing. Transmedia marketing is where content is extended across several mediums all contributing something different to the whole (Jenkins, 2006). For example from a film you then create a TV series, merchandise, a theme park etc. The integral difference between immersive and transmedia appears to be that in transmedia marketing the varying mediums act independently from one another. Whereas for immersive marketing the user would have to have knowledge of the story and characters to take part (Dickerson, 2007). Because after all the reason for creating an immersive campaign is that it would encourage the audience to engage with the art form, in this case by purchasing tickets in the cinema. 

Links below to the interactive websites

Hunger Games: http://www.thecapitol.pn/intl/uk/  

Prometheus: https://www.weylandindustries.com/