Avengers: Infinity War Earns Big During Opening But Has Spent Big on Advs Too

You might have heard about this: Avengers: Infinity War has the biggest global opening of all time, clocking in SGD$833 million throughout the weekend. In comparison, the previous record holder was The Fate of the Furious, which brought in about SGD$705 million.

Its predecessor, Avenger: Age of Ultron, brought in SGD$510 million, but back then, people believed that the lacklustre opening was due to a featured boxing match between Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao, which fell on the same weekend.

But of course, the movie also holds the record for being the second most expensive movies to make, at an estimated cost of SGD$390 million, losing only to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, which has a whopping budget of SGD$492 million (that’s like over 1,400 four-room HDB flats, FYI).

These numbers aren’t that unexpected, considering the number of Avengers involved.

Still, considering the hype it has created prior to the movie (183 million views for its trailer in just YouTube!), you’d have thought that they won’t need to spend a single cent on marketing?

Of course you’re wrong. Marketing is critical in every movie, especially if it’s a tent-pole movie like this.

And if you think that they’d have spent less to marketing, since each Avenger would have its own fans, think again.

According to reports, the star-stubbed movie spent about SGD$6.4 million in advertising, and that’s only in the US. This was on 923 national ad airing on 39 networks (yeah, other countries have many networks unlike Singapore whereby we only have one).

The ads started showing from 11 March 2018 with 34 different versions of the trailer (or whatever they do with it: we’re not in the US so we won’t see it).

But of course, these are spendings (paid) on TV.

According to deadline.com, the movie has also obtained a media value of about SGD$195 million through its partners. It’s hard to explain what that means, so just take a look at this video:

So this ad is obviously promoting a mortgage lender, but it uses the movie as a setting. That in turns also generate eyeballs for the movie, and therefore providing marketing value for it.

Imagine many brands doing that for the movie: that is considered publicity as well and the measurement of it is media value.

May I add just one more marketing that Avengers: Infinity War has successfully implemented (deliberately or on purpose): the way people complain about spoilers online. I see that as the traditional word-of-mouth marketing, but this time it’s going online (very effectively).

And let’s all face it: in marketing, there’s seldom an “accident”.

Marvel might have struck gold with Thanos, but their marketing team deserves a pat on their back, too.

Now you know what Singaporeans are talking about today; do check back tomorrow for another piece of news of the day!