With
the internet and social media becoming more engrained and taking on a bigger
role in today’s world, transmedia has become one of the best ways for franchises
to market themselves on a whole new level. A franchise can start off as a
novel, then delve into film, television, and gaming to name a few.
A prominent example of transmedia
today is the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The franchise, which obviously started
with Marvel Comics, officially kicked off with the Robert Downey Jr. Iron Man movie. Because Iron Man was such a hit, the studio was
able to keep that success going and basically scrape the bottom of the Marvel
barrel, and make the likes of Guardians
of the Galaxy and Doctor Strange
blockbuster hits. For context, Marvel sold some of their bigger stories (X-Men, Spiderman) to Fox as they were facing
bankruptcy. Marvel Studios was able to buy back the rights to Spiderman earlier
this year, which is a testament to how successful their franchise is now.
One of the main reasons why
transmedia works as a marketing tool is that it tries to get everyone involved.
Someone who may not necessarily be a fan of the movies, can get involved by
playing the video game, or reading the comic. According to Henry Jenkins, in
convergent culture, everyone is a participant.
“Within convergence culture,
everyone's a participant—although participants may have different degrees of
status and influence.” (Henry Jenkins, Convergence
Culture: Where old and new media collide – pg 132)
The MCU is found on several levels
of media. Their main media sources are film, television, video games and comic
books. Their greatest asset is that it is all one universe, thus all these characters
exist in the same universe, which is enticing to fans who are used to having a
limited cinematic universe. The MCU even produces several short films, no more
than 5-10 minutes long, to give fans an “update” of to what their favorite hero
has been up to since the last movie. For example, Thor moved to Australia and
became roommates with a local.
One of the MCU’s biggest strengths
is their marketing. Through social media, movies have a larger platform to
advertise their upcoming projects. This particularly showed with the MCU’s two
latest movies; Captain America: Civil War
and Doctor Strange. Months prior
to the release of Civil War, both the
Iron Man and Captain America Facebook pages were posting the films posters, but
only showing members of their teams. Additionally, two hashtags were created:
#TeamCap and #TeamIronMan. Despite the fact that this movie was already one of
the most highly anticipated movies of 2016, marketing the fact that it was a
movie about Iron Man and Captain America fighting each other intrigued the
casual fan and those who took part in the hashtags provided free publicity.
More recently with Doctor Strange each Facebook page of a
Marvel character posted about the Sorcerer Supreme, as compared to the
exisiting MCU characters, he is probably the least popular. Marvel didn’t use
hastags to promote Doctor Strange,
instead they used gifs disguised as regular pictures or posts. The average
Facebook will scroll through Facebook, see a Marvel post and read through it to
see what they have to say about the movie. However, while reading, the text
begins to disappear and Benedict Cumberbatch, dressed in his costume, appears.
We then realize the post was actually a gif, meant to show audiences what’s in
store for them in the film.
“Relatively few, if any, franchises
achieve the full aesthetic potential of transmedia storytelling—yet. Media
makers are still finding their way and are more than willing to let someone
else take the risks.” (Jenkins, pg 97)
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is taking advantage
of the marketing potential they have. Most people will see a movie if it has “Marvel”
slapped on it. Behind the abundant amount of projects they have on several
different platforms, is a smart social media team that is able to involve as
many people as they can.
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where old and new media collide
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