Synergy and Cross-Media Convergence

 "To what extent has cross-media-convergence and synergy played a part in the success of the media texts you have studied?"  

 

Cross Media Convergence and Synergy play bigger roles than ever in the marketing of media products. Especially in the case of powerful conglomerates like the Big 5: Disney, Paramount, Sony, Universal and Warner Bros, this plays a major role in their success and because of their power and reach, through owning other studios in both horizontal and vertical integration to effectively engage audiences. 

Disney in particular dominates even this prestigious group of studios with a 26% market share as of 2021, through their various acquisitions throughout the years including Capital cities, Fox Family, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and Fox. This 26% statistic is also down from their peak in 2019 prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, where their market share was 33%. This monopolisation has had its effects on the industry but quite a few negative ones including the threatening of the viability of new stories being told. It also lessens the quality of media produced in an industry that needs creativity to thrive. 

Synergy is when companies inside a conglomerate work together to market a product or brand. The idea, as with all marketing strategies, is to maximise profits. A good example again within the Disney conglomerate is their acquisition of Marvel and with it the rights to use all the characters. The result was the creation of a massive cinematic universe that has an equally massive fanbase. This fanbase all flock to see every film they put out there and it is a money-making machine because of it. With Marvel, all the films and characters overlap giving the audience members reason to go watch the other films. People want to go watch the Avengers films because they have seen the characters in other films and want to see all these characters interacting with one another. Each film complements another. The post-credit scenes teasing the future of the franchise keep the interest and hype alive in the fanbase. 

Marvel is a very established platform of Disney’s conglomerate with 65.3 million followers on Instagram who would be a small percentage of those going to watch the movies. 4 films in the top 10 highest grossing films of all time are Marvel films with a Star Wars film also in the top 10, another franchise owned by Disney. This is a great example of cross-media convergence and synergy succeeding to create a successful brand, but it should be said that it is not always the case. Warner Bros. has attempted to create a cinematic universe from the DC comics characters but the films have not been very successful compared to the likes of Marvel, because of certain issues in production; an example is Justice League where a change in director with creative differences and in the end the film became a box-office flop. 

In a smaller film industry like New Zealand where money is not the main goal and an organisation like the New Zealand Film Commission (NZFC) is out to promote the culture and history of the nation, cross-media convergence and synergy are used to make New Zealand films successful to meet those goals. Unlike the Big 5, these smaller films do not have big budgets to work with so they have to use different methods to attract attention to the films. A good example of this is “What We Do in the Shadows”, a low-budget ($1.6 million), New Zealand film. They used synergy in the changing of the Wellington sign in Wellington to “Vellington” because the city was the setting for the film. They also had a dating app where characters interacted as well as selling products from the set on Trade Me (New Zealand equivalent of Ebay). Another example of the NZFC promoting the country of New Zealand in a big budget film was for the Hobbit films through Air New Zealand. There was a viral safety video that branded Air New Zealand as the airline of Middle-Earth, since the films were wholly shot in New Zealand. 

Another good example of synergy was for the film Black Panther where awareness was raised for the film through comics, video games and the like. This also is horizontal integration. These are ways that a conglomerate like Disney can use their means to promote their films. They also used product placement in the form of a Lexus car that appeared in the film, and an advertisement showing Black Panther holding on to the car like in the film.  

The Shirky “end of audience” theory states that audiences are no longer passive audiences. They want to interact with media more. The rise in technological advancement has changed the way audiences view media, expectations and behaviour. It is no secret that the likes of newspapers and magazines are declining. Digital versions are now preferred because of being more active forms of media. Audiences now want to interact with producers but also with other audiences, and social media is a very good example of this at play. 20 years ago, interaction between audiences and producers of media was at a minimum compared to today and it will continue to increase as time goes on. 

Cross-media convergence and synergy can be very effective to promote films but as I mentioned before it does not guarantee success, and it is harder for lower budget, independent films to make their mark using this. What We Do in the Shadows was a success for its scale and small budget of $1.6 million. But a film like Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the most expensive film ever made with a budget of $422 million, the grossing of What We Do in the Shadows of $7.3 million is barely a dent in the budget. All this to say, films made by the Big 5 that use cross-media convergence and synergy are much more likely to succeed than lower budget independent films like What We Do in the Shadows. F f