Research task- methods of promotion

How are films/artists promoted? How has this changed in recent years?
When releasing a new media, they will arrange press releases, advertising campaigns, merchandising, franchising as well as using social media and interviews involving the film makers and actors. The rapid increase in social media platforms and technology has developed a lot in the past decade. This makes it easier to promote your film. The younger generation are particularly savvy with new technology making the target audience a lot broader. 
What different forms of marketing do we see?
There are a number of different forms of marketing, social media is a very good way of promoting your film. There is also offline marketing which consists of TV adverts.
-Outbound marketing includes any marketing efforts that are taken to introduce a product or service to someone who isn’t looking for that product or service. Some examples are cold calling, sending newsletters, billboards, and banner ads on different web sites.
-Inbound marketing focuses on having your company found by customers, as opposed to reaching out to them directly. When the consumer searches for that product/service on a search engine, the search engine results page will show inbound marketing results. Instead of using paid advertisements.
-Newsletter marketing and email marketing refer to ways of promoting your company/product through emails.
-Search engine marketing (SEM) is the way in which companies promote their business through paid placement on search engines like Google. Instead of increasing the organic search results that a website has, companies will pay to have their advertisements in the sponsored section of search engines.
-Direct marketing’s main goal is to send a message directly to consumers, without having to use any third party outlets. Examples of direct marketing include mail marketing, telemarketing and direct selling. Direct marketing is often preferable because the results can be easily measured, giving the marketer a better understanding of the success of that campaign. For example, when you sign up with a company such as Disney, you may be notified about deals, film premieres or events.
-Affiliate marketing most likely involves four different groups that contribute to the marketing effort. The Merchant is the company that is producing and selling the product. For example, when a film is being released merchandise may too be released in order to promote the product further.
Are there any innovative examples of promotion you can find?
-Mobile Marketing, along with Internet marketing, mobile marketing is part of the newest groups of marketing activities. Companies have been experimenting with the certain ways to reach consumers through their phones, especially with the rise of Apple’s iPhone. Some ways to marketing a product or service through a mobile phone include SMS marketing, in-game marketing, banner marketing on different web pages and location based marketing. Disney is a large conglomerate which enables tem to have a huge number of marketing materials, there are a number of games and apps which inform the user of recent releases to planning a day out at one of the resorts. This style of promotion has become huge due to the rapid rise in technology.
How has technical convergence and the proliferation of hardware changed how films/musics products are marketed ?
Technical convergence, due to the rapid development of media and technology, now changes the way in which media is marketed. Music apps and film companies may converge to market each other which will create a bigger audience as different people will be exposed to the marketing. This is also cross-media convergence, the companies are cross promoting each other. For example, the new James Bond films such as Skyfall and Spectre converged with Spotify to promote each other. By listening to the song it informed people of the new film, and when watching the film, Spotify is promoted as it informs the audience where they can enjoy the song.
Proliferation of hardware is a type of marketing which promotes the film through the use of teaser trailers, official trailers and advert.The proliferation of hardware has furthered how films/music is marketed as overtime technology has become more advanced which enables marketing strategies to become more successful. Audiences can download or stream films/media to the mobile devices or tablets and watch it on the go. The product is more popular as it is more accessible to a wider audience. However, there is a slight disadvantage as people now do not but the DVD copy, meaning the company loses out on its revenue. In addition, piracy has increased making It easy for audiences to save money.