Hunger games transmedia storytelling

kel964 September 9, 2016

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M O H A N B I R S A W H N E Y A N D P A L L A V I G O O D M A N

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Using Digital and Social Media for Brand Storytelling

The Hunger Games film series began in 2012 with the launch of the first movie in the franchise.1 In 2013 the second film, called The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, was released and set the record for the biggest opening weekend for any movie ever released in November.2 The marketing campaign for the film was launched well in advance of its opening and employed a promotional campaign that leveraged digital and social media in a coordinated and holistic way to tell a brand story and to engage existing fans of the first movie. Lionsgate Entertainment and Ignition Creative collaborated to create a new type of marketing campaign that relied on storytelling in a digital world and blurred the lines between reality and fiction. This novel marketing strategy, called brand storytelling, consisted of a mix of social media campaigns undertaken across a variety of platforms such as YouTube, Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, while bringing into sharper focus brand and designer partnerships in the film, and attracting enthusiastic fan participation.

While many aspects of the campaign marked new ground for a film promotion, it raised some unanswered questions. What did the campaign do well, and what could have been done better? Did the campaign really enhance the Hunger Games brand and audience participation? Was brand storytelling the future of film promotion, or was it a one-off concept that lent itself well to this particular film?

1 The trailer for the first Hunger Games film can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4S9a5V9ODuY. 2 The trailer for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAzGXqJSDJ8.

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The Hunger Games The Hunger Games got its start in the form of three novels written by American author and

screenwriter Suzanne Collins. First in the trilogy was The Hunger Games, published in 2008. Next came Catching Fire, in 2009, followed by Mockingjay, in 2010. The novels were set in the imaginary, post-apocalyptic nation of Panem, which consisted of a wealthy Capitol and twelve districts, in varying states of poverty and starvation, which were ruled by the Capitol. The citizens of the districts were forced to participate in an annual televised competition called the Hunger Games.

The novels combined the genres of science fiction, adventure, drama, and action. The series quickly captured readers’ imagination, especially that of young adults, becoming a top seller on Amazon.com and besting the Harry Potter book series.3 By 2014, the novels had sold more than 65 million copies in the United States.

Brand Storytelling Brand storytelling uses new distribution platforms to create personal and unique consumer

experiences. Although the branded content is created independent of the audience’s needs, the storytelling used to deliver that content connects with the audience’s imagination and evokes powerful emotions that linger in their minds. Brand storytelling uses characters and injects personality, humor, and emotion to keep audiences engaged and entertained. It appeals to the audience to imbue a story—and by extension, a brand—with meaning. In a hyperconnected and social world where consumers can find out everything there is to know about a brand or product, evoking emotions about a brand’s value can be a powerful way to connect with the audience.

Transmedia storytelling is a technique that allows a story to unfold across multiple media platforms and that solicits the active participation of fans and end users in the story’s expansion across these media.4 In transmedia storytelling, the “spreadability” of the narrative is an important consideration and is accomplished through “viral marketing” practices in social media channels. In transmedia storytelling, finding the core fan base that will share and disseminate the narrative is a crucial element of the campaign. Transmedia storytelling strives for continuity of the narrative as the story expands across multiple channels, thus giving fans an immersive experience in the story. Transmedia storytelling as we know it today emerged in the entertainment industry with films such as The Blair Witch Project (1999), whose promotional campaign incorporated televised “documentaries” on the history of the (fictional) Blair Witch and on-the-street personnel who distributed missing-person flyers for the characters who disappear in the film. The technique was rapidly adopted by brand marketers across a wide range of industries. The rise of transmedia brand storytelling was fueled by the ability of digital and social media channels to connect with diverse audiences across the world. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, for example, used a combination of vlogs, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Tumblr to retell the story of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice in the twenty-first century, which created innovative opportunities for fans to interact with the story.

3 Julie Bosman, “Amazon Crowns ‘Hunger Games’ as Its Top Seller, Surpassing Harry Potter Series,” New York Times, August 17, 2012.

4 For an overview of transmedia storytelling, see Henry Jenkins, “Transmedia Storytelling 101,” Confessions of an Aca-Fan (blog), March 22, 2007, http://henryjenkins.org/2007/03/transmedia_storytelling_101.html.

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An early example of transmedia brand storytelling was the Audi A3 “Art of the Heist” campaign (see Exhibit 1). This campaign, designed and executed by marketing agency Campfire in 2005, featured an interactive story about a stolen Audi A3. The campaign involved the audience by making them part of the investigation to find the vehicle. It was like a spy movie, except that this drama moved back and forth between the virtual world and the real world, with the audience as active participants in the story. It began with live footage of a car theft in progress at an Audi dealership on Park Avenue. The thieves made off with a brand-new Audi with the police in hot pursuit. The chase was unsuccessful and flyers were later handed out describing the stolen vehicle. The next day, Audi posted signs at the New York International Auto Show asking for information on the vehicle.

Bloggers around the world posted stories about the stolen vehicle and billboard and messages appeared asking for the public’s help in finding the vehicle. A TV commercial was even created about the car’s disappearance that described some of its features: “open sky system,” “dual clutch DSG,” “Audi Nav Plus,” and “two SD card slots.” Finally, the A3’s website revealed that the company had hired a firm specializing in the recovery of high-end art items, Last Resort Retrieval, to find the missing car. Last Resort had advertised its services in several high-end magazines to strengthen the illusion of its authenticity. Audi even enlisted the help of a videogame designer to design a game/ app that would help to find the missing car. An influential blogger had also compiled details of the case and a curious visitor to the site would have found videos and clips about the theft and details about the public’s participation in the recovery of the car. Anyone following the story could watch events unfold as in a movie. A visit to Audi’s site would have revealed that the “stolen” car had been recovered and why it had been stolen in the first place. The audience had participated in the largest and most experiential “reality blurring” campaign ever executed. The campaign resulted in 45 million PR impressions, 500,000 story participants, over 10,000 leads to dealers, and over 2 million unique visitors to AudiUSA.com.

Other transmedia brand storytelling examples included Campfire’s campaign for the popular HBO series Game of Thrones (see Exhibit 2), as well as campaigns for the films Prometheus and The Matrix. Mattel launched a transmedia storytelling campaign to unite dolls Barbie and Ken after Mattel engineered their break-up. Mattel had “Ken” post photos on Facebook and videos on YouTube, as well as check in on Foursquare in a concerted effort to win “Barbie” back. Fans could follow Ken’s efforts and the narrative thread across different media.

Promotional Mix for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire Realizing the power of transmedia storytelling, the producers of The Hunger Games: Catching

Fire made social media the centerpiece of the film’s marketing campaign (see Exhibit 3). These social media channels served to illuminate the difference between the privileged life of the inhabitants of the Capitol and the bleak lives of citizens in the twelve districts ruled by the Capitol.

A traditional marketing campaign would have focused on creating brand awareness three to six months prior to the release of the film, using established elements such as ad placement on TV, radio, magazines, and billboards, as well as partnerships, a dedicated website, and YouTube teasers. Other traditional elements included in-person PR (interviews, red carpet), online PR (blogs and social media), and cross-marketing partnerships. The Catching Fire campaign was an elaborate effort that went beyond movie posters and websites to attract attention and create intrigue in

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curious fans’ minds. Tim Palen, Lionsgate’s marketing chief, who was responsible for crafting the message and the images, remarked, “This was dramatically different from anything we did for the first movie. It was brave of the filmmakers to agree we should be that bold.”5 Teaser billboards began appearing in April 2013, well in advance of the film’s slated November opening, depicting futuristic fashion called “Capitol Couture” that garnered fans’ eyeballs and attention (see Exhibit 4 and Exhibit 5). When curious fans googled the terms “Capitol Couture,” they reached a Tumblr site about the Capitol. The Tumblr site in turn led to the Capitol’s links on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram. Although fans had encountered the Capitol and its districts in the novels, these sites allowed them a much deeper engagement with life in the hard-edged city. Fans could experience the strange world of fashion in the Capitol through these sites and links, much more so than they ever could in the books and the movies. As in the books and movies, the Capitol largely was depicted as dark, mysterious and intimidating.

Tumblr The Capitol Couture Tumblr (http://capitolcouture.pn) allowed Hunger Games fans to engage

deeply with the culture of the Capitol. Even though the Capitol formed an important part of the story’s plot, it had remained mysterious in the books and movies. The Tumblr site changed this by offering fans a look into the strange world of fashion in the Capitol. The Capitol Couture Tumblr was designed like an online magazine and celebrated the “incredible achievements” of the Capitol in art, fashion, and design. Articles on fashion and culture were penned by real-life writers, who were featured on the site and given titles such as Editor-in-Chief, Fashion Designer, Capitol Correspondent and Capitol Contributor, thus blurring the lines between fact and fiction.

The online magazine, which borrowed its look and feel from real-life luxury magazines, also contained elaborate photographs of the film’s characters taken by Tim Palen, a professional photographer who had led previous Lionsgate campaigns for movies such as Saw and Warrior. He was said to be as enthusiastic as the teenage fans of the film, and author Suzanne Collins felt that the film’s marketing under Palen was in safe hands. Palen had consulted closely with Collins before conceptualizing the campaign. Palen and his team designed the Capitol Portraits, a series of detailed and dramatic photographs that vividly depicted each of the eleven major characters in the film (see Exhibit 6). Each portrait’s release became a major event and was sent to the magazine’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram feeds. Simultaneously, the portraits were also distributed to a team of partners such as Yahoo Movies, MTV, MSN, and the Huffington Post. These media outlets agreed to refer to the images as Capitol Portraits, and similar outlets did the same.