The experience

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2025/5.

The event took place exactly two weeks before the Variety Entertainment Marketing Summit in Los Angeles, where marketing executives from the entertainment industry’s biggest names shared their experiences and insights. Although at first glance the two fields don’t seem to be related, on closer inspection it is only their size that makes them incomparable. If we take a look at the most successful promotions we have analysed, we find exactly the same criteria that are important in the entertainment industry. Experience, entertainment, emotional involvement and positive memories. This is why a well-designed mechanism is necessary: a prize pyramid where it matters what is at the top, how wide it is and how many levels does it have, how complex or simple it is, and it is also important whether the game is based on instant prizes and has a low entry threshold, plus it is key to be accessible to everyone and go beyond the immediate target group, because these things make it fair, so the promotion should try to involve as big a community and audience as possible…

One of the central themes at the summit was the problem that marketing campaigns narrow the target audience with their overtargeting, by this losing potential consumers – which means that basically it is us who create obstacles to the success of our own work. Warner Bros cited the Minecraft movie as an example, where the most well-known Minecraft content creators were involved as organic creators during the development phase. This helped to promote the film in an authentic way and on a large scale, with the Financial Times predicting that it will gross USD 700m globally, making it the second highest-earning video game adaptation ahead of the 2023 Super Mario Bros movie. Universal Pictures brought up the marketing campaign for the film Wicked. The musical’s fan base alone would have been insufficient for a project worth hundreds of millions of dollars, so the campaign was specifically extended beyond the world of musical fans, while taking into account the specific characteristics of local audiences. According to Reuters, the film opened with global box office revenue of USD 164.2m, a record for a Broadway musical adaptation.

We can’t talk about such large numbers in connection with our promotions, but we can talk about positive experiences as the basis for success. I think there was a lot to learn from the more than a dozen successful projects presented at the conference. Those who took the time to attend had the opportunity to hear about the success factors that are currently necessary for putting together the best promotions. Trade magazin will feature a detailed report on the event and the winning promotions in issue 6-7.