Anna Karenina vs.

The Dark Knight Rises Marketing Strategies

Anna Karenina
Anna Karenina focused more on traditional marketing as they had a different target audience to The Dark Knight Rises. Traditional marketing methods would appeal more to the target audience as they may not be very familiar with newer technology, therefore things like posters and trailers on TV would be more appropriate.

Anna Karenina - Poster

This is the poster for the film, it depicts the main characters in their lavishly dressed manor, standing on what seems to be a sort of stage. Its a very traditional looking poster and it works well because of the art-house feel, it looks very theatresque.

The Dark Knight Rises - Posters

There were many posters for The Dark Knight rises, showing that they still consider traditional marketing and fully utilised its capabilities by producing aesthetically pleasing posters featuring some of the main characters and capturing slogans. They know that many people will still see posters and the effect that they have in creating hype, some also like to collect posters so they have also made use of this and produced several different posters.

Anna Karenina - Trailers

Anna Karenina has several different trailers on several different sites. Focus features released exclusive content to Vue cinemas, a number of trailers and teasers a long with bits of information. There are trailers on YouTube but there isnt an Anna Karenina channel, therefore the trailers arent really representing the makers of the film. Even so, the trailers are still advertising the film.

The Dark Knight Rises - Trailers

TDKR has a reasonable amount of different trailers and teasers, the website was offering 4 different trailers which were very easy to find. Also TDKR has a YouTube channel with different videos including trailers, interviews and other content as well as links to other corresponding pages. This is important as a very large number of people use YouTube to view content such as film trailers.

Anna Karenina Magazines/Newspapers

I couldnt find any actual magazines or newspapers featuring a review or details of Anna Karenina, most probably because it wasnt a main feature, more a cinema listing. Alternatively there were reviews on sites such as Empire and the Telegraph who have magazines and newspapers.

The Dark Knight Rises Magazines/Newspapers

TDKR had several covers on different magazines, therefore many magazines had the film as the main feature and some offered exclusive content also. The magazine Empire have a very wide fan base and did two special covers for their issue on TDKR , this would have received a lot of attention and hype for the film. The fact that so many different magazines featured it shows that TDKR branched out a lot more in terms of advertising, most probably because of a larger budget.

Anna Karenina Social Network

I looked on several different social networking sites including twitter but couldnt really find anything apart from the official Facebook page. Either there arent any other sites or they are tricky to find, which wouldnt make much sense in terms of advertising. The Facebook page was reasonably good from what I could see, with links to several relevant links such as videos and the official website. The Pages posts were mostly links to reviews or other content such as interviews, this is good because a lot of people use Facebook and it costs a lot less than other ways of advertising.

The Dark Knight Rises Social Network

TDKR had quite a few results when it comes to social networking, they had both a Facebook and a Twitter page which offered content and links similar to that of Anna Karenina (links, videos etc.). Another feature that they had was on their website, little buttons so you can share the film on your page. These may be small but they are very important as it allows people to share and spread the word for free. Social networking also allows the advertising department to see the target audience and who it is appealing to most at any given time, this allows them to make changes to attract a wider audience if needed.

Conclusion
The Dark Knight Rises walks all over Anna Karenina when it comes to the advertising campaign. TDKR had a lot more content in a lot more places, and these forms of advertising (whether they were online or not) were much more thought out and planned than Anna Kareninas. This is mostly down to the massive budget that TDKR had in comparison to Anna Karenina, but also the different target audiences. Anna Kareninas target audience were more inclined to be drawn in using traditional techniques of advertising where as it was more the other way round for TDKR, but Anna Karenina could have tried harder when it came to the social networking/online side of things because they could of increased their audience massively.