“The Man Who Killed Don Quixote: Marketing Plan” – FX6017

A marketing plan for Section B of FX6017

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, dir. Terry Gilliam (2018)

Marketing Plan

Implement an initial Social Media campaign, calling for a Crowdsourcing movement from the public, incorporating traditional trailer marketing in co-operation with New Media notions of marketing; namely social media promotion and audience engagement.

This campaign has the potential to create a unique and successful marketing initiative that exploits each of the aspects of the target audience as listed below:

1) Nationality

• Transnational Co-Production (United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, France), with American Director(1) – generates regional interest.

2) Genre

•  Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Comedy, Adventure, Period – Wide array of genres, appeals to different audiences and niche interests.

3) Director Fanbase

• Terry Gilliam Stardom – Star Director must have “certain style, genre or quality which appeals to intended audience”.(2) Gilliam has all three (eg. Use of wide angle lenses, previous work with the above genres, critical acclaim and cult following). Popular social media accounts (500,000 Facebook Likes, 200,000 Twitter Followers). Film has particular appeal to Gilliam fans as has had a troubled twenty year on-off production (interest in which is shown with cult documentary Lost in La Mancha).

 

4) Themes

• The themes of the film relate to the pre-existing interest in the story of its production (the protagonist is taken back in time to meet Don Quixote years after giving up his own attempt to make a Don Quixote film). This theme of perseverance and refusal to not give up on a dream enhances the appeal of a potential form of audience participation.

Creative Strategy

Proposal: To use social media to promote a crowdsourcing campaign, asking the public to create their own trailer and/or scenes and/or mash-up videos. The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has a unique potential for this idea for the following reasons:

1. Previous Footage – Previous failed productions have left large amounts of unused footage (as seen in Lost in La Mancha). This footage could be released publicly and used to encourage people to edit it into their own trailers or scenes from the film. It is also worth noting that the plot has changed enough between the original and newest production that it would be easy to release this footage without creating spoilers.
2. Previous Actors – Over the last twenty years the lead characters have been recast several times (eg. Jean Rochefort, Robert Duvall, John Hurt, Michael Palin and Jonathan Pryce have all been attached to play Don Quixote at different times). This gives the potential to promote fan mash-up videos, using clips of the actors from other films and television shows to create scenes for The Man Who Killed Don Quixote, appealing to both fans of the different stars as well as fans that have followed the troubled production.

This creative strategy has the potential to uniquely combine old and new film marketing techniques by utilising social media and crowdsourcing while incorporating the traditional film trailer. This works to appeal to more traditional audiences along with a new “Active Audience (‘who doesn’t want to just sit there but to take part, debate, create, communicate, share’).”(3)

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote has a unique appeal for a crowdsourcing campaign due to its difficult production. Framing the campaign as asking for much needed help – due to the difficult production– would be a persuasive angle to take. Sam Hinton and Larissa Hjorth defined crowdsourcing as a way “of users working together to produce materials or solve problems”.(4) Using Terry Gilliam’s personal social media accounts, it would possible to exploit this idea of crowdsourcing as a personal plea for help from the director. This is also in keeping with the films themes, as noted above.

The use of actual film material would also aid this because you would need to create a strong community for this to work, and as Tom Glocer put it, “if you want to attract an audience around you, you must offer them something original and of a quality that they can react to and incorporate in their creative work”(5), which is exactly what this campaign aims to do.

The use of trailers is an effective, and in this case, highly efficient marketing technique. Trailers’ popularity as a form of marketing is unquestionable – each year one billion trailers are watched on video sharing platforms alone(6) – and particularly cost effective today thanks to the internet allowing unlimited time restrictions and cheap distribution. This cost effective nature of creating and sharing trailers gives the crowdsourcing campaign huge scope, with a large potential community of people with the ability to engage with such a campaign. As Ann Zeiser points out in Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media, by being so efficient, trailers can be used to “serve various audiences”(7) as there is freedom to create a variety of trailers. This campaign maximises the potential appeal to niche audience markets. As noted in the above marketing plan, the film has a wide range of potential target audiences ranging from different nationalities, genres and director fandoms. By crowdsourcing the creation of trailers, every aspect of the target audience has the potential to be catered for with different members of the community likely to concentrate on his/her own favourite aspects of the film.

 

While using trailers as an effective marketing tool, the campaign itself uses the same theoretical principals as a trailer. In Film Marketing, Finola Kerrigan describes how trailers work – “trailers must at once ‘withhold the fullness of the cinema event’ while achieving a ‘sense of heightened presence’”.(8) This is how trailers work successfully and this is also how this campaign would succeed. By releasing previous material, and encouraging the creation of films and mash up videos, the campaign would generate interest in the film by giving the audience something of the film without ruining the actual draw of the finished product, enticing the audience with limited access and a communal sense of involvement with film.

As described by Zeiser, “audience engagement with a product [is a] requirement of good creation and marketing in today’s world. And where your top-down and bottom-up approaches meet is the sweet spot of transmedia making and transmedia marketing, [where] the lines between creators and promoters are becoming increasingly blurred”.9 This campaign would oscillate perfectly between this top- down, bottom-up approach, merging the filmmaker and active audience creator to create a highly efficient and varied marketing campaign, exploiting the identifiable target audience and appealing to fans of engagement and traditional marketing alike.

1 “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” Internet Movie Database. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1318517/ Accessed on 7 December 2017
2 Kerrigan, Finola. Film Marketing. Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2010.

3 Mandiberg, Michael, editor. The Social Media Reader. New York University Press, 2012, 14.
4 Hinton, Sam, and Larissa Hjorth. Understanding Social Media. SAGE, 2013, 62.
5 Mandiberg, Michael, editor. The Social Media Reader. New York University Press, 2012, 15.
6 Zeiser, Anne. Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media. Focal Press, 2015, 264.

7 Zeiser, Anne. Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media. Focal Press, 2015, 267.

8 Kerrigan, Finola. Film Marketing. Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2010, 14.

9 Zeiser, Anne. Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media. Focal Press, 2015, 11.

 

Works Cited

•  The Man Who Killed Don Quixote. Directed by Terry Gilliam, Recorded Picture Company, Eurimages, Movistar, Televisión Española, Proximus TV, Tornasol Films, Kinology, Entre Chien et Loup, Alacran Pictures, Wallimage, Entre Chien et Loup, 2018.
•  Lost in La Mancha. Directed by Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe, Quixote Films, Low Key Productions, Eastcroft Productions, 2002.
• “The Man Who Killed Don Quixote” Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1318517/ Accessed on 7 December 2017.
• “Terry Gilliam” Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/Terry.Gilliam/ Accessed on 7 December 2017.
• “Terry Gilliam” Twitter, https://twitter.com/terrygilliam?lang=en Accessed on 7 December 2017.
•  Kerrigan, Finola. Film Marketing. Elsevier/Butterworth-Heinemann, 2010.
•  Mandiberg, Michael, editor. The Social Media Reader. New York University Press, 2012.
•  Hinton, Sam, and Larissa Hjorth. Understanding Social Media. SAGE, 2013.
•  Zeiser, Anne. Transmedia Marketing: From Film and TV to Games and Digital Media, Focal Press, 2015.