As a response to the sluggish film industry in Korea, low-budget movies are on the rise. Even well-made low-budget films have had difficulty in achieving a commercial success due to lack of affordability to occupy screens and unroll lavish marketing e...
As a response to the sluggish film industry in Korea, low-budget movies are on the rise. Even well-made low-budget films have had difficulty in achieving a commercial success due to lack of affordability to occupy screens and unroll lavish marketing efforts. Also, it has been considered and conducted as a good and effective marketing practice to draw on exposure to media such as TVs or papers for the purpose of attracting large audience in a short time. There is no denying that low-budget films cannot afford the costly marketing. In that sense, it is necessary to apply appropriate marketing for low-budget movies rather than blindly following the uniform and ready-made film marketing. One of those marketing efforts is the word of mouth, which is worth noticing.
This study analyzed a series of cases in regard of the marketing effects of the word-of-mouth on box office hits to verify that the word-of-mouth is important to film marketers and it comes not accidentally but strategically as well as that constant and continuous efforts need making to last the word-of-mouth.
For the benefit of effective word-of-mouth marketing of low-budget films, it is a must to attract and manage initial audiences and capitalize on timely PR to extend the effects of the word-of-mouth. Initial audiences refer to those who attend the premiere as free visitors and those who watch the film at an earlier stage of release as paying audiences. Initial audiences play an absolute role in long-term screening. Low-budget films are hardly distributed in the form of wild release, so the power of initial audiences is useful to extend the duration of screening and occupy more screens. However, it is not sufficient to wait for their word-of-mouth. Through the official home pages, blogs or communities on the internet should open, free discussions on the film are facilitated, and the participants in those discussions need to be turned into post maniacs. Also, PR factors need to be carefully developed to further the word-of-mouth. In case of <Old Partner>, not only the word-of-mouth but also the peculiarity of the film itself contributed to its marketing and PR. Unfortunately, most of films do not easily meet the same kind of serendipities. For longer circulation of the word-of-mouth, timely and proper factors for PR have to be offered in accordance with the progress of film screening. Film marketers should diligently collect factors available to PR while films are in the middle of making and reveal those factors in a timely manner with a view to prolonging interest in the films.
The present study has a few limitations as follows: to analyze the effects of the word-of-mouth marketing, a wide range of marketing cases of numerous films might as well be examined but due to the difficulties of time, expense and data collection, <Old Partner> released in 2009 was chosen as the study focus. Also, some negative cases of the word-of-mouth marketing could have been analyzed as well for a more profound result on the subject. As a result, based on this study, more case studies need to be conducted to establish measurable criteria. In addition, as the word-of-mouth is delivered through audiences, negative aspects of the word-of-mouth beyond the control of a film marketer need to be managed, which is worth studying. In spite of all those limitations, this study is acceptable in that it has verified the effects of the word-of-mouth marketing through an empirical case analysis.