Thor: Love & Thunder- Marvel-ous Marketing Lessons For Brands
The Asgardian God of Thunder is back in town. Yes, we are talking about Thor: Love and Thunder. And we are pretty excited to go over the details of Marvel’s strategies for promoting the movie.
Anything and everything that happens in the Marvel Cinematic Universe becomes the talk of the town. A new movie announcement or even a trailer release. From social media to billboards and TV ads, you see the news everywhere.
Over the past few years, Marvel has grown to become the epitome of marketing in the digital era. No wonder, the Marvel Cinematic Universe continues to be the highest-grossing movie franchise in the US and Canada.
Marvel’s approach for promoting Thor: Love and Thunder has been quite different. But it has had the intended effect. So, let’s see what marketers can learn from the marketing strategies that Marvel has used for this new Thor movie.
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Marketing Lessons From Marvel’s Promotion of Thor: Love and Thunder
1. Set a theme and stick with it
If you have seen the posters for this Thor movie, you might have noticed the 80s hard rock theme they all have. The theme has been consistently used across all marketing channels. This has set a strong identity for the movie. So, even amidst an array of posters in a multiplex, you will instantly recognize this one.
Kimp Tip
Creating visual consistency should be your core focus in marketing. When your print ads look nothing like your digital ads, then you are not making much of an impact. Take a look at the below images.
One look and you might have guessed that both the marketing designs are for the same brand. The first image is a social media image and the second one is a flyer. See how you were able to connect the designs despite not knowing the brand? That’s the power of visual consistency. And having a strong visual theme makes this easy. Like the one Marvel uses for marketing Thor: Love and Thunder.
Creating a solid brand style guide is the first step to achieving consistency in design. Capture the color palette and other visual details. And if possible, document the reason why chose them for your brand. This will make it easier to connect the design with the brand.
Don’t have your brand style guide yet? Don’t worry. The Kimp team can create one for you.
2. Hashtags are kind of a big deal
Marvel creates a hashtag for every movie or series it promotes. And you will see this hashtag on most posts and videos about this movie/series. The hashtag also remains the same across platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. So, if you want to join the conversation or get updates about a particular movie/series, you know what hashtag to check.
For Thor: Love and Thunder, the hashtag is #ThorLoveAndThunder. You will find this one along with most important announcements about the movie.
Kimp Tip
Create a hashtag for each product or campaign you wish to highlight. If possible, have a unique hashtag for your brand as well. Make sure to include your hashtag(s) in your print ads like flyers for the campaign or even social media images. This way, your hashtag gains more visibility. And people will know what hashtag to use when they share content about that particular product or campaign.
3. Build anticipation
With all of its movies and series, Marvel has followed one trend- building anticipation before the release date. This helps because fans might remember the release dates of all their favorite movies. But for others, with the overwhelming amount of content that Marvel releases, keeping track of release dates might be tough. So, these days-to-the-release posts are quite helpful.
Kimp Tip
You can never go wrong with a good old countdown post. If there is a big event coming up or a product that you wish to popularize even before its launch, then create a campaign around it. Talk about this product on your social media page consistently. Remember to add posts that count the days to the day of launch. This will ensure that customers who missed your old announcement post will still be updated.
Remember to use the defined hashtag and the design theme in all of these posts. This way, even if you only post about this particular campaign once or twice a week, they will still appear connected.
4. OOH never goes out of style
Marvel continues to prove that outdoor advertising is not going anywhere anytime soon. Like all other Marvel movies you see on billboards, even Thor: Love and Thunder rocked the display in New York City. And this time it was a motion poster.
Kimp Tip
Every marketing medium has its reach. So, if your brand caters to a wide range of demographics, it is good to have a balanced approach when you plan your channels for marketing. So, when you segregate your marketing budget, try to accommodate outdoor ads like billboards.
Of course, if you have a design subscription, like Kimp, you do not have to worry about spending extra to get a billboard ad designed.
For such massive displays that need to convey information quickly yet strongly, you can use animated loops like the one Marvel uses in the billboard above. Wondering how to design them? A Kimp Video subscription can take care of most of your marketing video design requirements.
5. Take your customers behind the scene
From sharing bloopers to sharing videos featuring the cast sharing their experience, Marvel uses multiple ways to keep its social media page lively. And for Thor: Love and Thunder, Marvel shared a peek into the sets where the movie was filmed.
Kimp Tip
Showing customers what happens behind the scenes will be a good way to earn their respect. They will appreciate the product and your brand a little more when they see the process and the effort that goes into creating and delivering their products. If you cannot create elaborate sneak-peek videos, you can always put together some quick ones to share on your Instagram and Facebook Stories.
Want to add some professional touches to your raw video footage of what happens behind the scene? Don’t worry. Video editing is also part of the Kimp Video subscription.
6. Merchandising has its own charm
Marvel is a strong advocate of merchandising. You will find a whole lot of action figures and other cool merchandise being promoted when there is a new movie coming up. This helps in delivering something tangible for customers to remember your brand. And in the case of Marvel, merchandising has helped in creating fans out of the regular audiences.
Kimp Tip
Merchandising has a strong role to play in branding. It helps introduce your brand to customers and strengthen brand awareness. In the long run, this can be a useful tool in building customer loyalty as well.
Want to design printed t-shirts and other merchandise? Get in touch with the Kimp team today.
7. Partnerships strengthen your brand
Marvel has never shied away from partnering with other brands big and small. Considering how diverse Marvel’s target demographics are partnerships with brands with niche audience helps strengthen its fanbase.
For example, here is Marvel’s partnership campaign with California Almonds.
California Almonds engages its audience with humorous ads like the one below.
You will notice the mascot being featured in most of these comic videos on social media. Humor has been a crucial part of Thor: Love and Thunder marketing. No wonder, the partnership post strikes all the right chords with the audiences of both these brands.
Kimp Tip
Business partnerships have their own perks. When you do choose your partners or influencers or even businesses to collaborate with on social media, keep a few things in mind:
- Choose brands that are relevant or at least connected with your niche in some way.
- Ensure that you verify and pick only brands whose values are similar to that of yours, at least to some extent.
- If all this seems confusing, look for brands that have a similar messaging tone as yours. This way you can create marketing materials that do not deviate from your brand in terms of the tone of messaging.
Looking to create partnership posts? Use videos or images or perhaps both! Kimp has got a subscription for each of these.
8. In the end, don’t be afraid to switch things up a bit
Have you noticed that Marvel usually releases a movie trailer and starts its promotional activities months ahead of the actual release date? It then keeps building anticipation through subsequent promotional tours and events. But that’s not the case with Thor: Love and Thunder.
The trailer was first released hardly 80 days before the movie release. This is the shortest promo window for any Marvel movie. There is so much happening in the MCU. There have been plenty of new releases like Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel, and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Considering this, Marvel has been keeping its marketing content crisp yet impactful. This clearly shows one thing: you might have a plan for marketing. But you should be ready to tweak this plan based on how your business is progressing at the moment.
Kimp Tip
Some of your products might need a lot of advertising. You might have month-long countdowns and online contests like giveaways and the likes. All of this helps build suspense and evoke curiosity in your customers. There’s no doubt about that.
But once in a while, you need to take a different path. Not all your products need extended promotions. Some of them might need active and engaging campaigns just a few days ahead of the product launch or announcement date.
We understand that changes are prone to occur in your marketing strategy. That’s why with Kimp, you can conveniently add subscriptions if you wish to increase the designs for the month. Or pause your subscription if you do not require too many designs at the moment.
Bring your Thor: Love and Thunder inspired marketing strategies to life with Kimp
When you have all these brilliant ideas in mind, all you need is a supportive team that executes your design requests accurately. When you are working with a design subscription service like Kimp, there is a dedicated design team that takes care of all your design requirements. As a result, the team understands your brand better with every new design they create for you. So, you can confidently create a strong visual identity for your brand. And also be sure that this visual style is consistently maintained in all your marketing designs.
So, what are you waiting for? Choose your Kimp subscription today with our risk-free 7-day free trial.