To Kill A Mockingbird: Movie Marketing

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD: SEEING THE FILM THROUGH THE LENS OF MEDIA LITERACY

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When you think about the marketing of a film, you might think about an ad you saw on television, an interview with the director or star, a review by some film critic, or the trailer you saw streamed on the Internet. All of this is part of the campaign to promote, market and attract an audience to a film.

Studios spend millions of dollars getting the word out about their film on TV, radio, newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Studios have people and departments whose sole responsibility is to oversee marketing and promotion.
Each film is trying to reach a “target audience,” those people identified as the ones most likely to pay to see the motion picture. So, advertising and promotion is designed to identify what media the “target audience” pays attention to.

Capturing their “eyeballs” is a way to reach the audience and get them interested.

In 1962-1963, the year To Kill A Mockingbird was released, movie marketing looked surprising similar to marketing of today. There was no Internet, of course. One thing going for it: a highly successful and award-winning novel published in 1961 by Harper Lee. It had won the Pulitzer Prize for literature. Bookmarks were distributed to schools who were reading the novel, and a film study guide was produced and distributed by The National Council for Teachers of English.

As you and your students consider this Academy Award winning film, think about how it was marketed THEN, and how it might be marketed differently today.

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