Week 6 EOC: Movie Promotion

For this assignment, I have chosen to promote Monsters University. This movie is an animated prequel to Disney Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. The storyline follows how Mike and Sully met and went from not standing each other to becoming best friends. I think that this movie would appeal to both younger kids and young adults. It would obviously appeal to younger kids because it’s an animated Disney Pixar movie. However, I think it would also appeal to young adults in college. This is because when Monsters, Inc. was released back in 2001, most young adults in college now, were at right around the age of 8 (give or take a couple years) and fell in love with Monsters, Inc. like we did with Toy Story. Monsters, Inc. was part of our childhood, and seeing a movie where the characters are in the same situation they are, would definitely appeal to them. I think the best way to approach promoting and marketing the movie would be through demographic segmentation and psychographic segmentation.

In order to promote this movie to kids, I would use demographic segmentation. According to Marketing: An Introduction by Armstrong and Kotler, “Demographic segmentation divides the market into segments based on variables such as age, gender, family size, family life cycle, income, occupation, education, religion, race, generation, and nationality.” (Marketing: An Introduction, Armstrong and Kotler, 177) In this case, I would market the movie based on age. For little kids, the first thing I would do is make cool toys for fast food chains like McDonald’s and Burger King to give away. Little kids love happy meals and little toys, and everyone knows that the movie is good if the toys are good. For the young adults, I would maybe create an Instagram, Facebook page, and Twitter. On the Instagram, I’d post pictures of the characters, maybe post a #throwbackthursday picture of Mike and Sully in college from the movie. On Facebook, I’d give updates on the movie, promotions, and characters. Lastly on Twitter, I’d create accounts for the characters and post funny remarks that sound like it’s actually them and that older kids would find witty and relate to.

For the older kids in college that I’d market this movie to, I would also go more off psychographic segmentation. “Psychographic segmentation divides buyers into different segments based on social class, lifestyle, or personality characteristics.” (Marketing: An Introduction, Armstrong and Kotler, 179) Most of the Millennial generation loves personalization and things they can relate to. Therefore, I’d use social media to promote the movie, and encourage build that connection between the characters of the movie and the target market. I’d have people post things with hashtags promoting the movie to encourage others to use the same, which will then let their “friends” on their social media sites know and do the same as well.