Straight Out of Compton Marketing Campaign

Marketing Techniques
Traditional marketing - posters (teaser poster), billboards, trailers (teaser trailers)
Websites - Interactive, very visual, links to social marketing
Social marketing - Official character feeds/social media presence of characters
Viral marketing - Blair witch: "word of mouth buzz". Teaser clips sound bytes to convince people it was real. Made it so realistic that police were calling up to offer help finding missing kids.
Press marketing - Press (i.e. magazines and newspapers) access to the film/images before it comes out so they will promote the film.
PR stunts - Unexpected, national treasures, talking point after, watched by millions.
Fan created marketing - Websites, forums, fan-fiction, fan made merchandise, fan made posters
Issues for marketing campaigns: Actors have contracts to allow how much poster space they have. Films flopping and paying for their own marketing campaign.

Synergy - when two media industries work together well
Synergy between soundtrack album and film.

Fuck Tha Police N.W.A song
Racial profiling.
Fuck tha police - dont trust them at all/hate them.
Reversing roles so the black people are the judge and jury vs the police department.
Intercut with a parts of a story/ and ends with a white police officer being prosecuted.
Rap/Gangsta Rap.
Guns/Gun law.
Re-appropriation of the word nigger to represent them and their culture. Changing what the word represents and taking ownership of it.
Hugely controversial song - promotes killing police.

Straight Out of Compton Marketing Campaign
Context
Produced by Legendary pictures, Universal pictures distribute in 2014.
Universal is owned by NBC Universal, a comcast company. Major vertically integrated film part of a major conglomerate.

What economic factors led to the creation of this film in 2015?
Relatable to audiences even now (Black Lives Matter, Political Correctness)
Rap has a massive following - large audience
Hiphop biopics genre already exist

Audiences
Teenagers interested in the music industry - inspirational message
Fans of N.W.A young/old
Activists - political subject matter
Young working class audiences who like rap/hiphop
Young black males - majority black cast
Fans of biopic films
Fans of film studios
Fans of rap/gangster rap/hiphop
Trailer
An advert to sell tickets for the movie, this one tries to convey more of a message than build a large level of suspense because it is biopic and actually happened.
Censorship of swearing - 'Radio edit' e.g. record scratch.
Teases conflict within the film by using hermeneutic codes to create mystery.
No voiceover. Takes traditional narrative of characters identifying themselves within their speech clips. No voiceover because it would take away from the musical theme. No need to voiceover because fans are one of the main audiences.
No specific date released. No actors names mentioned - actual names of N.W.A instead because they are the appeal not the actors because it is biopic.
Film logo referencing parental advisory sticker to show it is explicit.
Majority black cast - unusual for big budget blockbuster to have this. Few white characters who are generic token characters.

Poster