Black Panther and The Power of Marketing

On it's opening weekend at the box office, this year's Black Panther earned $218 million worldwide, breaking records for a solo superhero debut and February opening. This success, at least to an extent, is reflective of the extensive marketing campaign Marvel utilised in the months prior to the film's release. In this post I shall examine the strategies Black Panther used, serving as an example of promotion that appears to have amassed results. Expanding the debate, these shall then be compared with Warner Bros.' tactics for Justice League and Wonder Woman (both 2017), in order to assess the power and limitations marketing has in the superhero genre.

Black Panther first made a presence way back in 2015, ahead of an introduction in Captain America: Civil War in 2016. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige stressed the importance of making the African superhero "a full character" in this film, rather than just a cameo appearance. With his solo outing already scheduled, this served as an effective way to gauge audience interest for the protagonist as well as contextualise his presence within the MCU. To follow this up, Marvel commissioned a new comic book series on the character, aiming to bring in fans of the medium and keep the character on people's minds. Then in 2017, the marketing kicked into another gear. The first poster came out in June, followed promptly by a teaser trailer at the NBA finals and online. In the first 24 hours, it got 89 million views. The subsequent month Marvel revealed a partnership with car company Lexus, which led to the superhero appearing in a Super Bowl commercial with one of their cars. This was watched by an estimated 103 million people. A further collaboration saw shoe designer Clarks Original release a limited edition trainer linked to the film, as well. Clearly, Black Panther's marketing team sought to promote the film not only to comic book and superhero film fans, but far wider audiences. NBA fans, Super Bowl viewers, luxury car followers and those interested fashion were all made aware of the movie. Furthermore, Marvel also chose to put  emphasis on the fact that 90% of it's cast are black, as well as it's director. This promoted the film not just as pure entertainment, but a cultural landmark. The release date falling bang in the middle of Black History month was no coincidence, moreover. Given the amount of people who went to see the film upon it's immediate release (indicated by it's opening weekend box office revenue, and significant because it was prior to word of mouth influencing sales), it would appear to serve as evidence that a large marketing campaign is the key to commercial success within the genre.  

However, this is not dissimilar to the campaign used by Warner Bros. to market Justice League, which had very different results. In the lead up to this film's release, it's team likewise partnered up with a luxury car manufacturer - Mercedes here - for advertising purposes, and had it's characters appear in razor commercials for Gillette (see below) and more, reaching millions on broadcast television and the internet. Accompanying these, of course, were several trailer and poster releases online as well. The film undoubtedly had a presence - equal to if not larger than Black Panther's, in fact. Yet it's opening weekend, described as  a "box office disaster", only wielded $93.8 million worldwide - less than half what Black Panther earned.



Moreover, Warner Bros.' previous superhero outing, Wonder Woman, had a far more toned down marketing campaign but still earned $103 million on it's opening weekend at the worldwide box office. Prior to it's release, far fewer brand deals were made, the character did not feature in any vehicle commercials and Warner Bros. released a lower number of trailers than it later did Justice League. Indeed, this was to such an extent that they eventually attracted accusations of under-promotion.

Does this devalue the power of marketing, then? Well, not entirely. At the end of the day, a film's opening weekend box office is influenced by multitudes of factors beside just it's marketing campaign. In the case of Justice League, the poor reception of it's predecessors Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad (both 2016), along with reports of production issues, likely created scepticism within audiences. Team this with the public controversies surrounding some of the stars (Ben Affleck's sexual harassment joke, being only one) and you can see why many weren't attracted to the film.

As for Wonder Woman, look a little closer and you see that, though perhaps not as big as it's competitors', it's marketing campaign was still extremely strong. In fact, it used the same tactic Black Panther later did to sell itself. It promoted it's cultural significance. As well as emphasising the fact it was the genre's first female-led film since 2005 and the first female-directed live-action film given a budget of $100 million, stars Gal Gadot and Chris Pine also featured in a video for International Women's Day, linking the film to the global female empowerment. The result? It made it feel like a cinematic and cultural milestone. 

This is marketing at it's best, and it's opening weekend success attests to that. It's impossible to reach an entirely solid conclusion on the power of marketing however; Justice League highlights this. Nevertheless, I hope this post has shown that it can prove extremely effective, if used correctly, as in the cases of both Wonder Woman and Black Panther.