The Hunger Games Viral Marketing Campaign : A Study of Viral Marketing and Fan Labor

Abstract:

This essay examines Lionsgate’s viral marketing campaign for The Hunger Games (Gary Ross, 2012) and the marketing teams’ use of new marketing techniques and the online fan base. The essay also asks the question to what extent the fans’ participation in Lionsgate’s marketing campaign can be called fan labor. The study is based on a film industrial perspective and academic literature that deals with film marketing, the film industry, fandom and digital labor. The material used for the analysis of The Hunger Games marketing campaign is collected from newspaper articles and news interviews with Lionsgate’s marketing personnel. The study shows that although Lionsgate used many new marketing strategies associated with viral marketing, it is problematic to depict these strategies as a wholesale movement from older marketing techniques. It points to the importance of a nuanced understanding of how producers and consumers operate in the digital age with a holistic view on film marketing practices. The study also shows that Lionsgate’s use of the online fan base correspond with many characteristics of fan labor on the internet. It is, however, problematic to establish that this necessarily means that the fans’ contributions to the marketing campaign were exploited or that it demands compensations. The essay argues that the popularity of viral marketing among film studios and their use of fans and fan created content for promotional purposes calls for further investigations.