Synergy and Cross-Media Convergence

"Synergy and Cross-Media-Convergence are vital processes in the successful marketing of media products to audiences." To what extent do you agree with this statement in relation to your chosen media area?

Several media institutions use synergy and cross-media convergence to market their films successfully and introduce them into different markets. The Big Five media conglomerates - Walt Disney Studios, Universal, Warner Bros., Sony/Columbia and 20th Century Fox - have the advantage of owning different studios in both horizontal and vertical integration that allows them to effectively engage audiences and promote their films with the use of cross-media convergence and synergy.

Disney has the advantage of owning a large number of acquisitions that they now have the highest percentage of studio market share. In 2018, Disney held the top three spots for films with the highest grossing films domestically, with Black Panther coming in first at $700 million. In addition to this, on the list of highest grossing films, numbers 9, 12, 14 and 18 were all films owned by Disney. As well as this financial success, Disney owned 26% of studio market share in 2018, then in 2019, Disney paid $71 billion to acquire 20th Century Fox's assets, which was previously at 9.1% in terms of market share.

Synergy is where different companies of a conglomerate work together to market or advertise a brand/product , thus maximizing exposure and profit. The aim of using synergy methods is to create a consistent and recognizable image of the brand/product, or in this case, media films. While synergy and cross-media convergence are not necessarily going to immediately guarantee success to all media studios, more specifically smaller and less well known ones, it certainly does aid in helping larger conglomerates such as Disney. Since Disney has already acquired studios such as Miramax, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Fox from 1993 to 2019, their acquisition of Marvel and the rights to many characters with it in 2009, gave Disney a fame that has only increased the number of audience members that engage with their media texts on a daily basis. Leading up to the release of Avengers: Endgame in April 2019, Walt Disney studios used several methods of cross-media convergence during the marketing and promotion stages of film distribution. As well as promoting the movie itself, it also promoted the movie that was being released before it: Captain Marvel by showing her character in the trailer of Endgame. Since Captain Marvel was still being showed in cinemas when the trailer came out, it gave people a reason to watch the movie in order to be prepared for her appearance in Endgame, since Marvel is a franchise.

With 32.5 million followers on Instagram, Marvel has a well established platform to publish content on. They catered their marketing materials specifically to individual channels, for example, using condensed snippets of trailers on Instagram with a link to the full video on YouTube. Marvel was also consistent with the #AvengersEndgame hashtag being used on social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. Many iterations of poster designs could be seen on Marvel's social media pages, working perfectly to engage fans and visually showcase the actors and characters in the film. To capitalize on the audiences bereavement, Marvel also produced a series of images for social media juxtaposing the characters who survived the previous film (Avengers: Infinity War) with the ones who were sadly snapped out of existence. This is a very simple idea but one that builds up anticipation as to whether the dusted characters will return or not and drives huge engagement.

Disney has used synergy and the one man who kicked the idea of synergy into high gear was Michael Eisner. He would create movies in order to promote attractions in the parks at Disneyland and vice versa. We saw this work to great success with such properties as the Pirates of the Caribbean but not so much with the haunted mansion. These are easy ways to subtly remind the viewer of the other platforms that the story exists on, and make them want to experience the other variations once again, or for the first time. Disney will also broadcast television specials (mainly on their own television networks they have acquired over they years) in order to promote new and upcoming attractions to their theme parks, slowly building the hype through the internet and the slow release on information they do now.

The NZFC is government owned and is not entirely dedicated to making profits and maximizing exposure for their movies, but rather keeping New Zealand films and culture alive. Unlike Disney who uses their A-list actors such as Tom Holland and Zendaya to promote their films by going on live television such as the Graham Norton show, and how smaller film studios such as Madman Entertainment  (NZ) uses synergy to change the Wellington sign to 'Vellington' as well as creating dating apps with the characters and selling items from the set during the promotion of What We Do in the Shadows, the NZFC is primarily focused on keeping the culture alive and is mainly aiding tourism in the country.

Other uses of synergy were used when promoting Black Panther. By using horizontal integration, Disney produced movies, comics, books, video games, interactive games, tv channels such as Disney XD and animated Tv series to bring an awareness to the public. By utilizing different companies within the conglomerate, not to mention Black Panther's first appearance in Captain America: Civil War, they were able to create more awareness and more engagement for their media films. In addition to this, Disney licensed the rights for Black Panther to Lego so that when the film came out, several Black Panther Lego sets came out with it. Product placement also came into use, as an advert for a Lexus car featured Black Panther which was also the type of car used and seen in several scenes of the film itself.

Synergy and cross-media convergence are very effective ways to promote media texts and bring engagement across several different platforms across the world. Though some films have been successful despite the large use of these methods, for example What We Do in the Shadows, it could've had a march larger audience engagement if it were a well known media studio or distributor, such as one of the Big Five, or if it had the money and resources to do so, especially since Avengers Endgame had a budget of $356 million compared to WWDITS' $1.6 million budget.