What Made Animal Kingdom a Marketing Success?

Animal Kingdom is a very low budget film - it was made with a budget of fewer than 5 million pounds as opposed to big-budget blockbuster movies like Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides which has a budget of between 150 and 250 million pounds. This means that there is more room for profit, but less room for the development of the film.

The main thing that made Animal Kingdom a marketing success was the use of social networking sites. By posting news and information about Animal Kingdom on Twitter, Facebook, etc. it allowed the makers of this film to directly target people who want to see these films.                                                                    

In addition to this, Animal Kingdom has only been screened in small, independent cinemas - and in only a small handful of them. This is not a disadvantage, however. Mostly, the people who wish to see small, independent films like Animal Kingdom choose to see them beforehand - they have the intent of going to see this film, rather than turning up, seeing that it looks good, and watching it. There will be people who come across it this way, but mostly people will make the personal decision to see the film. The result of this is that people who want to see this film (possibly because of directed marketing online, as aforementioned) will probably go out of their way to travel a further distance to an independent cinema showing the film. This attracts people from a wider area to the cinema - nullifying the possible disadvantage of less cinemas screening the film.

Another very important part of Animal Kingdom's marketing was its focus on the Sundance award it claimed. As a prestigious, famous award among the film industry, this signifies Animal Kingdom as a better film than most. When looking through a list of films, this can really make Animal Kingdom stand out. This award presents a very important marketing tool that Animal Kingdom used well to stand out from the crowd. The fact that it richly deserves the award helps as well.


Finally, the trailer for this film is an often overlooked, brilliant part of the film's marketing. It is a very stylish trailer (personally, one of the best I have ever seen) that effectively gets across the main information about the film. A great choice of music (All You Need Is Love by Air Supply) also assists greatly as it not only improves the quality and entertainment of the trailer, but it makes it memorable. It is so memorable fue to the brilliant use of the music. It comes in after the hard-hitting words "Protection, Manipulation, Morality, Survival, Loyalty" and provides an effective change of pace. The fact that the trailer is so memorable improves the widespread knowledge of the film as people watch the trailer and are interested by it.

Overall, Animal Kingdom was a marketing success because of clever, effective marketing methods that marketed the film brilliantly to the audience that would want to watch it.

The trailer for Animal Kingdom that I mentioned: