Pride Marketing

Essay— 

The two posters for the film are light-hearted and seemingly happy with everyone smiling, which works well with the vibrant colours, which reinforces the theme of happiness. The positive, which has large words included such as ‘cheer’, gives the film an image of being uplifting g, funny, and overall, positive. They feature plaudits and critics which give very positive reviews of it being a fantastic film, but also hard-hitting, and quite sad, as one of the reviews does say that it will make the audience ‘cry’ despite being funny. This is reinforced by the image of the brick wall. Originally, it may seem that it’s just a wall, however it signifies the obstructions that the characters have, and the ones they will face throughout their life. This works well with the images of the huge megaphone, obviously a signifier that everyone needs to speak up for themselves and have their own voice, speak loud and proud for the things you stand up for. As the title of he film is ‘Pride’, this means that people who are gay should speak loudly for their cause because they have pride in themselves. The word Pride means much more than that though. It’s about being happy, confident in yourself, Mark is the perfect definition for the word, because he is always the one who speaks up, he one who is always speaking through a microphone, and always the one who stands up, literally, in the speeches, quite often he is the one character that the audience see on their own, every other character is seen with another, Mark is Independent and confident in himself. The event, Gay Pride, which initially began as a peaceful march, is now seen as a festival in major cities across the world, such as Los Angeles, Sydney and Paris. With many cities adopting the festival, this could expand the target audience, as a growing number of people are aware of Pride, and would be more inclined to see the film if they are aware of the festival, or if they are aware of the struggles that Gay people had In the UK circa 1980. In the posters, the encoders choose to show a lot of the characters in the film, rather than keeping it to the main characters. However, this is quite useful, as it shows the audience that the film is centred around multiple characters, and doesn’t really have a main protagonist, it’s hard to tell between Bromley and Mark who is the main character, so to show multiple characters is clever, and shows the variety of storylines and plots that they will show in the film. The poster is quite diverse, showing all ages and genders, some characters, like Joe and Mike, who signify the Youth and Gay community, are on the left of the poster, while the older and mining community are sporadic throughout the poster. The characters are all typical types, Mark wearing the jacket and the haircut gives him a ‘Rock’ type of character. The other charters are wearing clothes that suit their character types, such as Cliff, wearing the clothes that stereotypically are wore by the older community, so the encoders have chosen stereotypes to try and market their film. The film has also decided to show their older actors more prominently than the younger actors, they decided to show Bill Nighy and Imelda Staunton at the front in order to appeal to an audience that will recognise them, they are both huge actors that have careers that go back many years, including them at the front means that more people will notice them. In the trailers of the film, the start of the film shows real footage of the miners, which is a clever marketing factor to include, because putting in real footage indicates that the film is based on true events, which is an appeal to the audience. The trailers present the audience with a mix of dramatic scenes such as the scenes of conflict and fighting between the miners and the police, while also showing the comical scenes, like when Gwen pulled out the sexy toy and made references to the lesbians. The one liners where cleverly used, as the music would stop which would empathise the comedy, such as when Gwen says to Dai that “The gays have arrived”. The entire trailer portrays the film to be an inspirational film, it’s meant to inspire people, to stand up for what they believe in, constantly reinforcing this ideology by showing the speeches and protests by the miners and the LGBT Community. The themes that run through the trailer is that by standing together, and creating an unlikely friendship, then anything is possible. Social Media played a huge part in the promotion of the film, especially Twitter. The Twitter account associated with the film provided followers of the page with exclusive clips of the film, and an interactive countdown to the release of the film in their country, town, or state. This is making sure that the fans of the film were able to experience something new from the film everyday, building up the hype of the film, and spreading the audience, because the more clips that can appeal to the audience can lead to a wider one due to word of mouth by the fans. During the Pride march in London, the encoders took park in marching with the film banner to promote the film, which is a clever marketing strategy, as the main people at the events are the ones depicted in the film, making them more likely to watch the film than any other event in London. Fans on Twitter who saw the event were encouraged to tweet them with pictures, which again engages them with the film, and can make them more likely to watch the film.