X-MEN FIRST CLASS

THE MARKETING PROCCESS.

WHY IS MARKETING SO IMPORTANT FOR A PREQUEL FILM?

The idea is to tell a story with characters and settings that are somewhat familiar to the audience. They want to do this in a new way. With some new characters and situations being added in to make it seem more wholly original.

STEP 1..POSTERS
The first teaser poster for the movie was pretty simple but was also clearly identifiable as a one-sheet for an X-Men movie. All thats viewable is the emblem of Xaviers School for Gifted Youngsters with a giant X in the middle and, at the bottom of the symbol, First Class. This revealed very little about the film but caused

speculation of plot etc.

STEP 2.. ANOTHER POSTER RELEASE

Then a second release of different posters were put out these revealed a release date for the first time.
These were not as successful as people said they were not in keeping with the usual xmen look. Professionals say that they were not a good quality and look like a rushed job which had little use in promoting the film.

STEP 3.. THE FINAL POSTER.

This was the poster that revealed the actors playing the main roles, what characters are involved from previous x-men movies and hinted at some areas of plot. For the first time NFC was used in public marketing campaign to promote the film. On special posters being displayed in London, passers-by that have NFC-enabled phones could simply tap their phone to the poster to reveal an exclusive trailer and a link to the Facebook Page with a prompt to Like it. This is one of the most mainstream marketing campaigns weve seen using NFC.

STEP 4.. FIRST TRAILER

Its a tight and intriguing trailer that, does a really good job of setting the audiences expectations in terms of time and place. There isnt a lot of time for performances or story to come out here but thats not the point with this initial spot. Instead its about announcing to the audience that a new, previously untold story of the mutant communitys past is being told.

Also that there are a host of new characters to latch on to as well as some returning ones.

STEP 5.. SECOND TRAILER

Later on a 90 second trailer was released that featured not too terribly much.

n the way of new footage but did reiterate the fact that were seeing the origins of the leaders of the two mutant camps before they were rivals.
Its pretty good and certainly tighter than the previous one but we still dont get much exposition aside from the theme that the two friends are going to go their separate ways in the battle to come.

STEP 6.. CHARACTER SPECIFIC TRAILERS

A series of character specific trailers were created for some of the mutants, including Havoc, Beast, Banshee (two of which were brand new to the franchise) and Mystique. Each of them showed some extended sequences from the movie that featured those characters, including some bits about how they grew comfortable with their powers. Mystiques ends, naturally enough, with a bit hinting at the relationship between her and Magneto that wed see more or in the later movies.

STEP 7.. ONLINE

The official websites for the movie opens with one of the early trailers auto-playing as a stream of updates from the official Twitter account fades in and out along the top of the page. About the Movie, which contains a paragraph long synopsis of the movies story and explains that, yes, Marvels Merry Mutants get all up 1960s geopolitical events in the film. Next up is Downloads which has a couple of Wallpapers, some Twitter Skins and a collection of Buddy Icons to grab is youre so inclined. They encouraged potential fans to get Tickets, check out the X-Men Extra App and view various things on the Facebook page. On that Facebook page there was also an opportunity for people to ask some questions of the X-Perts, which was the cast of the movie. Questions could be submitted ahead of time and then, it was promised the cast and crew would pick some to be answered later on down the road. An iPad/iPhone app was also developed that took people into the setting of the movie and strongly hinted that these mutant characters played some sort of secret role in many of the defining geopolitical events of the last half of the 20th century.

STEP 8.. ADVERTISING AND CROSS-PROMOTIONS

One of the first bits of advertising done for the movie was in the form of standees and floor decorations that were put in theaters and which featured the same bit X symbol for Xaviers school that was on the first teaser poster. TV commercials were also created that largely repeated the footage and overall arc of the trailer but with some new footage as well. Some advertising was done by the movies promotional partners as well. Farmers Insurance, which had already been running a TV campaign with an instructional approach, added Beast to one of their commercials and had one of their insurance students go over to act as a target for Havok to practice on.

STEP 9.. MEDIA AND PUBLICITY

After the calendar turned to 2011 things started to pick up publicity wise, whereas the latter part of 2010 was filled mostly with more casting announcements and the occasional set photo that someone was sure spoiled a huge plot point. One of the first stories was an interview with Jones (LAT, 1/4/11) about taking on the role of Emma Frost, with the actress talking about how she tried to get inside the characters head since because of her TV commitments it was tough to get in the kind of shape that the comics always portray Frost as having. After the debut of the first trailer, which absolutely lit up (THR, 2/10/11)social networks and movie blogs and fan sites, Singer talked more freely (LAT, 2/10/11) about the new characters that were being introduced or slightly revamped for the film and how they related to each other. Press continued with exclusive covers and coverage in Empire Magazine (March, 2011) and reports in that story that the studio and producers were actively working on continuations of the original trilogy in addition to the other various mutant spinoffs and solo features.

There were also some very cool 60s-retro covers featuring the cast that were created for coverage in Total Film magazine.