Star Wars - marketing research

Magazines 

Six 'Special Edition' Empire magazines were released featuring the crew from The Force Awakens, the special addition aspect draws more people into buying the magazine, plus 'in-depth' interviews featuring the main stars are also included in this special addition of Empire. The magazine also teamed up with Hasbro to sell limited edition action figures of the character 'Kylo Ren'. Star Wars clearly see the magazine world as a good way of distributing their film, as one article states '17 best star wars magazine covers of 2015' clearly showing how well they used magazines as a way of getting popularity and all types of people seeing their marketing. 

As you can see here models and clothing sites all advertised star wars, for their own gain and Star Wars' gain. The four quadrants of advertisement were met though magazine marketing alone. 

TV Interviews

The cast of Star Wars: The Force Awakens have promoted the film through television media. This included chat shows and interviews on shows such as ABC News, Graham Norton, Ellen and Good Morning America. This promoted the film by the cast members talking about the filming process, the cast and crew and spoilers of the film. Disney owns Lucasfilm and ABC Entertainment Group which the cast of the film where featured on to talk about the film. The cast appeared on the shows before the film was released to promote viewings. The shows attract a large audience anyway, so with an A-list, or soon to be, cast the viewings of the TV shows increased. This allowed the audience to see spoilers of the film to intrigue them and others to go and see the film when it comes out in cinemas or on DVD.  The shows the cast featured on are extremely popular in their country of origin and worldwide. The shows can be seen in other countries or by streaming or downloading it online to watch, this means the audience is even bigger and will be seen by thousands of people.

Tie-in Products

The marketing team behind Star Wars: The Force Awakens ensured that the film was marketed across all different types of media. Most films use marketing through TV interviews, trailers and magazines but only films with big companies and big budgets have the money to pay for tie-in products that market their film. Star Wars: The Force Awakens used so many different tie-in products meaning that the public almost couldn't escape the marketing for the film, it was impossible for nobody to have heard about the film. Some of the products were some that almost made sense with direct links to the film e.g. toys, however others were products that didn't correlate with the film at all e.g. cereal and oranges. These types of tie-in products are where both Star Wars and the company who own the product it is marketed on benefit because fans will be more inclined to buy that product because it has Star Wars on it.

Apps and Games 

There is a LEGO Star Wars The Force Awakens game for games consoles like Xbox 360, Xbox One and Play Station, Another Star Wars console game came out just before the Star Wars: The Force Awakens film did which was called ‘Star Wars Battlefront’ using game consoles and video games in general attracts a larger younger audience. They also produced board games, possibly attracting the older 'geeky' audience.