After the tremendous success of Phase 1, MCU Studios became more confident to spread its wings.
We have already discussed the marketing strategy of MCU Phase 1 in our previous blog. If you haven’t read it yet, check it out here.
They started Netflix series & Agents of SHIELD where they showed several characters, their journey; but for today we will stick to the movie phase 2 of MCU.
By now, the studio had already established it’s mad fan base, Marvel became a household name & they took bigger risks in terms of story or production.
This one has Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, The Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of the Ultron, Ant-man.
Let’s begin with Iron Man 3!
Iron Man 3
This one is probably the most popular Iron Man movie.
Off a $200 million dollar budget, it made around $1.215 billion!
Yes, that’s right.
The first look was revealed at Comic-Con. It was the first movie after The Avengers. The trailer rocked. The thirty-plus Iron Man suits were never seen before & people went crazy over Iron Legion. They relied on Facebook to reveal the promos.
Audi, Oracle & Verizon partnered as usual to promote the film. here was a Stark Industries pop-up at Disneyland, and they even repainted the monorail for the movie.
To sell the movie in China, they included extra Chinese scenes in the movie. The marketing team went extra for the movie just like Tony Stark!
Thor: The Dark World
The second installment of Thor dealt with more cosmic enemies. One of the best things about the movie is its production design. It gave a dark almost like a DC world vibe to the movie.
The marketing team had not much to work with this time other than brand tie-ups, Burger King, Skype & Harley-Davison.
They approached marketing in a bit different way with Loki appearing in full character at Comic-con. They mostly played off everything as their character to gain audience engagement. The movie made around $644.6 million off $170 million budget.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier
For me, personally, this one is the best movie from Marvel Phase 2, in terms of storytelling, character building, character deconstructing & production!
Also, just so you know, the team had a hard time marketing this movie. Some of you may remember that the first installment of Captain America was the second lowest-grossing movie of phase one.
Now, how do you make people come to the theatre when a lot of them had a boring, uncool perception of Cap? The marketing team first let the trailer speak for the movie at first. The trailer was mind-blowing!
A movie about a WWII hero fighting modern-day politics & military operations anyway was enough to pull crowds.
Then came the tease about the incredible elevator fight scene.
At the 2014 Super Bowl, a new spot dropped to drive people towards the new full-length trailer online. It was a really cool move using national anthem to promote a movie about tumultuous politics!
Other than this the usual tie-ups of Harley Davison, Comic-Con was there. But this time the team relied on the content for marketing Cap.
The cost to make the movie was about $177 million & it grossed a staggering $714.3 million. It is more than the first Avenger which grossed around $370.6 million!
Guardians of the Galaxy
This one was a risk!
The expectations weren’t high from this movie as it did not have any stars or that they were introducing a whole other cosmic world into the world!
They chose to reveal the character-based trailer of the movie but surprisingly the social media went crazy over it!
Digital sales went upto 700% the very next day. The music, the language, the middle finger, they all represented something new in science fiction.
Guardians were a little different from the usual space movies like Star Wars or Star Treck which dealt with more intellectual stuff. This one was charismatic, charming & light-hearted!
Plus with the film’s unique production design it could basically sell anything! Starting from t-shirts, bags, kits anything. They had managed to set over 50 brands agreed to partner up on this one. It was the same strategy of putting character faces everywhere as they did with Iron Man. They even put a fake travel site online!
The movie made $773.3 million, against $195.9 million budget.
At the time it became the third highest-grossing MCU movie behind The Avengers and Iron Man 3. All of that is a testament to how powerful the Marvel brand had become by then!
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Everyone was waiting for this one again!
The hype was there. We all thought we were going to see Thanos this time but instead, Marvel very cleverly announced the villain all at once.
The comic fan knew of Ultron, but for the rest of us, Ultron was a completely new character! Which meant the marketing campaign only really had to introduce him and make him threatening. Other than that, the hype was set with sky-rocketing expectations!
Marketing tie-ins started early for this one. Samsung put out a hardware show at the Consumer Electronic Show 2015, inspired by this movie. Harley-Davidson premiered their first electric motorcycle for Black Widow to ride in the movie.
They even teamed with ESPN to release the trailer during the 2015 College Football Playoff National Championship. A Hummel tracksuit, Adidas running shoes, an Under Armour shirt, Audi cars, Dr.Pepper drinks they did it all.
Even Gillette announced to make super-advanced razors with colorful models based on the male Avengers!
For a $365.5 million budget, Avengers: Age of Ultron made around $1.405 billion dollars!
Ant-Man
For many, they thought that phase 2 will end with the Age of Ultron. But MCU had to offer a little extra treat for us!
For Ant-Man, the marketing was done adorably!
They knew from the first that they had to sell the character based on how funny he is! And it worked marvelously.
They chose Paul Rudd, an actor with classic comic-timing along with Michael Douglass to match-up the gravitas. Tiny little Ant-Man billboards with real working LED lights that popped up all over the country.
Then to connect directly with the Marvel Universe, they put out a small version of him on important Marvel characters! Check this out!
All the marketing was again based on the character himself & Rudd’s charm played it well!
Ant-Man wound up making about $519.3 million with only $130 million budget.
How are you liking our series so far? Comment down here!
Also, to read the first part, check-out here!
