its being talked of a lot lately...and i wanna hear some takes. i personally believe that any marketing that is more then 3 weeks away from a film release has nothing to do with its gross...but thats just me.

Good Marketing is understanding your audiences and adjusting the perception of your film just enough to appeal to them without misleading them

So Sony then.

Sony was, for three years, consistently the best marketing studio out there. They dropped the ball a little 2004 and 05, but have been getting back on the game this year.

They know how to hype a movie without over-saturating it.

Good marketting is by using the hype machine to build interest in a movie. Advertisement should make audiences feel left out if they dont watch their movies, "must see of the summer" or taking audiences response like "it was the best thing Ive seen my entire life", marketting also usually sets aside a 5% contigency fee on the budget to bride a good portion of critics into giving your movie high marks. If that doesnt work, they create their own critics or go through every major website and use code name "plant" to build audience interest. Any negative remark about the movie will feel a sudden urge of wraith from the intern plants.

Next step in marketting is to add your movie image into every product as much as possible preferbly cigarrettes and alcohol since those two products reach the majority of americans. It doesnt matter if its the Smurfs, someone smoking a cigar will see he smurfs because they saw it in a pack of cigar. Polls also need to be distorted in a way in magazines and internet poll. You need an inside person to sabotage those polls in your favor

For me it's one of those "you know it when you see it" type of things. If you take an objective look at the quality & quantity of the tv spots, posters, trailers, etc. it's usually pretty easy to separate the winners from the stinkers. And quality doesn't necessarily mean the movie looks good, it's if the marketing is effectively singling out the target audience for the film, presenting them the movie in an easily understood/accessible way (they know what it's about, and want to see more), and in the best case scenario appealing to those outside of the main audience the studio is hoping to attract.

Right now I'd say The Da Vinci Code has the best marketing campaign going on, it's got a huge built-in audience with those who read and loved the book, plus the ads will draw in those who are fans of Tom Hanks/Ron Howard, those who enjoy a good mystery/thriller, and even a few religious folk due to the storyline. It's really got everything going for it, its only hangup so far has been Tom Hanks' hair

I think a lot of movies that fail at the box office have marketing that is focused on the wrong audience for that movie or a target audience that is much too limited. Recent examples being Slither & American Dreamz. And sometimes the marketing is be too broad, trying to appeal to so many different types of people that it ends up attracting almost no one. Like with Freedomland and Something New (perhaps with the upcoming Poseidon as well). And of course there are tons of movies that are just doomed to failure, i.e. they look wholly unappealing to almost any sane person no matter how hard the marketers try to convince us otherwise.