When Universal Pictures initially started it's social media marketing campaign for the movie "Straight Outta Compton" they had a dilemma on their hands.
Executives felt like the original trailer would resonate with African Americans and Hispanics, many of whom grew up on NWA's music, but the company was unsure how to market it to white audiences.
According to Business Insider, a plan was hatched by Univeral's “multicultural team” to show different trailers on Facebook. One would be catered to whites and the others to non-whites.
The plan was simple. Since Ice Cube had achieved mainstream success as an actor and Dr. Dre was known worldwide for Beats By Dre, the "white" Facebook trailer focused solely on their rise to success and didn't mention NWA at all.
African Americans saw the clip centered on the group's road to stardom. The trailer for Hispanics was basically the same, just shorter and included flashing quotes in Spanish.
Universal’s EVP of digital marketing, Doug Neil, and Facebook’s entertainment head, Jim Underwood, talked to a panel this week at South By Southwest and admitted to being surprised at the film's box office success.
“I shouldn’t say a surprise,” Neil corrected. “A breakout hit.”
According to Box Office Mojo, the film made $161,197,785 in the U.S. and a total of $201,634,991 worldwide.
Neil characterized this marketing effort as a complete success.
What do you think of this kind of marketing?
Follow Me
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
}
Comments