Mediaboss Marketing

Paramount Pictures and its marketing partners wanted to make sure Chinas young, digitally-inclined moviegoers were excited for thenew action sequel xXx: Return of Xander Cage.

So the team madea music video for an original song by xXx star and Chinese heartthrob Kris Wu. The video, which featured Vin Diesel and clips from the film, scored more than 40 million views online. The stars also did live video chats on Chinese social media, and took selfies with followers from Weibo, amassively popular social media site.

The marketing paid off. The film opened last weekend at No. 1 in China with $61million in its first threedays, triplingits soft debut last month in the United Statesand Canada.

Thedeluge of digital promotion for xXx highlights fundamental differences in the way movies are marketed in China ascompared to Hollywood. Though Chinas film industry is nascent, movie marketing efforts in the worlds most populous country often are more targeted and effective than in the United States.

We all think Hollywood is far more advanced than China in terms of content production, said Terry Qian, directorof Chinese online ticketing company Weying Technology Inc. But in terms of doing marketing and trying to more effectively spend print and advertising dollars, China is growing to be more advanced thanthe U.S.

Thats mainly because of the dominance of mobile Internet technology in the country, especially among young urban consumers whose business the studios crave. Online ticket salesaccountfor more than 70% of the Chinese box office,compared with roughly 20% in the United States, according to industry estimates.

The heavy digital sales in China, where young people buy virtually everything online, givemarketers access to detailed consumer datathey can useto adjust their marketing materials mid-course. The popularity of advance ticket sales also lets marketersuse online services such asWeChatto sendpromotionsdirectly to consumers. Executives say that is far more powerfulthanads onbroadcast TV, which is unpopular among Chinese youth.

Because they dont need to buy expensive TV ads, distributors have much lower costs in China. Marketing budgets for big films in China typically total $6million to $15 million, executives privately said. Studios often spend more than $30 million on U.S. television advertisingfor a single movie.

There is almost no TV or radio advertising for movie marketing in China, said Xian Li, director of international productions for 20th Century Fox Film. Digital marketing, along with some print, outdoor and in-theater marketing, are the key efforts, out of which digital marketing is the most cost effective.

Thatfact partly explains why U.S. studios have been so eagerto partner with Chinese tech companies thatinvest in Hollywood movies.

Selling stakes offilmsto deep-pocketed Chinese companies not only buttresses studios finances, but also gives them powerful allies when advertising their hoped-for blockbusters. For their part, Chinese companies are hoping their investments will teach them more about the film business.

Just last month, Chinastudio Shanghai Film Group and distribution and marketing giant Huahua Media agreed to invest up to $1 billion in Paramounts slate over the next three years. And Steven Spielbergs Amblin Partners last year secured a deal to co-produce movies with Alibaba Pictures, the film and TV arm of e-commerce titanAlibaba Group.

Hollywood studios still face big challenges when promoting new films in China.Foreignpictures undergo a rigorous censorship review from the government before theyre approved for release, and prime release dates are often reserved for local films. Studios typicallydont know their release date until less than fourweeks before, turning their marketing efforts into a sprint, whereas Chinese companies get months to build anticipation fortheir films. Paramount had just 11 days to promote its movie Arrival, for example.On top of that, theres heavy competition for attention in a market thatoften delivers 10 new movies in a single week, making it difficult for some movies to get attention.

You end up spending a lot of money very fast, said one studio executive who has worked with Chinese companies andwho didnt want to be named in order to protect business relationships. That sometimes means less bang for your buck.

Additionally, some in Hollywood have become increasingly cautious about theirfuture prospects in China,after a dramatic box office slowdown last year. Some saytough talk on trade by the Trump administrationhas dampened hopes that the Chinese government will loosen its 34-film limit on a revenue-sharing program for foreign pictures.

But still, Hollywood remains eager to tap into the growing marketplace. Thatsbecause when a filmworks in China,it still can mean the difference between a flop and ahit,as Paramount proved last weekend withxXx.

The movie, starring Diesel as an extreme-athlete-turned-special-agent,cost $85 million to produce and surpassed $100 million in Chinese receipts this week.

Megan Colligan, presidentof worldwidedistribution and marketing for Paramount, said digital marketing efforts were key, as wasits international cast that included Chinese martial arts star Donnie Yen.

The audience is young and highly mobile,Colligan said. Theres very open social engagement between the stars and the fans. Thats how audiences in China want to engage withthese properties.

Hollywoods desire to take advantage ofChina's growing online marketing opportunities has increased business for companies that partner with studiosto distribute movies there. Chineseentertainment company Le Vision Pictures, for example, analyzes local demographic data to see what types of people go to which theaters. The company has five different marketing teams focusing on particular audience groups, such as children andcollege students, tomake sure they are booking movieswhere the target audience is likely to show up.

You have to know where the audience is, said Le Vision Chief ExecutiveZhang Zhao. With an animated kids movie, you dont put it in every theater. You put it in theaters near kindergartens and schools.

Le Visionalso comes upwith unusual marketing tactics for specific films. For thelocal-language filmComing Home, the company offered a Mothers Day deal that letpeople buy a pair of tickets for their parents, along witha set of flowersand a car service to take them to and from the theater, all for $15.

Qians Weying Technologyhasproved adept at using data from online pre-sales includingage, location,gender, marital status andmonthly income toadjust campaigns on the fly.

In one recent example, Weyingrealized Sonys Chinese release of theBlake Lively shark movie The Shallowswould faceimmense competition fromParamountsStar Trek Beyond, a well-known franchise there. But whileStar Trek was dominating pre-sales in the biggest cities such as Beijing and Shanghai,The Shallows was tracking surprisingly well in second- and third-tier cities.So the studio reduced its number ofbig-city screenings for The Shallowsandfocused its efforts in lower-tier areas. The Shallows grossed $15million in China, a respectableresult for a movie lackinginternational stars.

ForLondon Has Fallen, released last April, Weying wantedto make the movie look more woman-friendly after discovering 90% of advanced sales were coming from men. One online and mobile poster featuring a menacing Gerard Butler was changed to show the actor holding a teddy bear along with hisassault rifle.

DavidU. Lee, founder and chief executiveof film producerand marketerLeeding Media, said his company had to get creative when promotingThe Divergent Series, a Lionsgate franchise based on a young adult book series that was little-knownin China.Forthe third movie, Allegiant, released last May, they re-created a storyline from the dystopian film by sendingout street teams representing the different factions in the books to engage with locals. China's Allegiant box office gross was more than 50% higher than the original Divergent, while the franchisedeclined in the United States.

When we release films, we need to be as innovative as possible with our marketing campaigns, Lee said.

Many executives now sayU.S. marketing and ticket-selling strategies arestarting to look more likethose inChina, a departure from the still-entrenched method of having people buy tickets in person. Lionsgate hasbacked Atom Tickets, a Santa Monica-based ticket-selling startup that uses data andsocialmedia to encouragegroup buying. Los Angeles-based online seller Fandango in September partnered with Facebook to let people buy movie tickets on the social network.

Were still playing catch-up, said Paramounts Colligan. But thats part of being a 100-year-old business.

ryan.faughnder@latimes.com

Twitter:@rfaughnder

More here:
The surprising success of 'xXx' sequel in China offers marketing lessons for Hollywood - Los Angeles Times