It seems like everyone loves The Hunger Games. According to MTV News, the film broke box office records, earning an astounding $155 million on opening weekend in North America alone.

This surpasses both The Twilight Saga: New Moon as well as Spider-Man 3, making this the third-highest grossing premier weekend of all time. This shattered any predictions made by experts, and it left many wondering: How did they do it?

The answer, of course, lies in the marketing strategy.

The Hunger Games was made to be marketed

The mockingjay pin logo

The Hunger Games’ success can teach marketers about the importance of having a solid product. This is the reason that the book had such a large following in the first place. First, the story had an amazing logo. The mockingjay pin was used on the cover of the novel and become key to the branding of the film. In the novel, the pin stood for courage and spirit. Lionsgate knew what the logo meant to fans of the novel, and put it in every trailer, poster and ad.

Second, the novel puts a heavy emphasis on partnerships. Spoiler Alert: Although only one person was supposed to win the games, two came out victorious. The novel is full of instances where one person could not have survived without the other, and this is something that can transfer over into the marketing world.

Having partnerships with other companies can strengthen your brand. Although you may not want to sync up with your competition, working with a complementary brand could help bring you a new audience.

Actors Jennifer Lawrence and Liam Hemsworth

Marketing the movie

Aside from what the novel brought to the table, the film’s producers were able to create a few little marketing tricks of their own. Word-of-mouth became very important for those charged with marketing the film.
The film had different social media accounts for the different “districts,” or groups of people, that were described in the novel. If you wanted to see what one district thought about something in the news, all you had to do was head over to that district’s Twitter account.

 

Marketers also created social media quizzes that let fans find out which district he or she would live in if they were in The Hunger Games’ story world. Once again, bringing the story to life really worked. There was an element of interaction to this marketing tactic, and teens everywhere couldn’t seem to get enough (In case you were wondering, I would have lived in District 8).

Most importantly, the social accounts never gave away any scenes from the film. The integrity (and suspense) of the story was preserved.

If you were to read the novel, you would likely find many more marketing lessons that relate directly to your business. Unfortunately, you will likely be too wrapped up in the story to really
pay attention.