THE DARK KNIGHT RISES 8
expressed through Twitter from the release of the first hashtag and continued through the entire campaign. The goal of a marketing campaign such as this one is to positively affect a significant group of people. Community member @ soonermatthews tweeted,“ Best marketing campaign ever. RT @ tdkr07202012: Case # TDKR07202012, video evidence file: http:// youtu. be / g8evyE9TuYk”( Appendix C). When positive tweets about the campaign are posted, it shows that Warner Bros successfully did their job in releasing and promoting the Dark Knight Rises brand, through the Twitter TDKR community.
Another major theme that surfaced was general excitement and anticipation for the release of the trailer and for the movie. On July 18, 2012, @ NellyJonea tweeted,“ I cannot freaking wait!!! RT @ GeeksOnMovies: The Legend End in 2 Days...# TDKR07202012 Are you as excited as we are?” We noticed that people were often retweeting campaign news about the scavenger hunt and the upcoming film, as well as adding their own comments about their excitement. In this example, @ NellyJonea retweeted a promotional post from @ GeeksOnMovies and added to it by sharing her excitement. Similar to # thefirerises, the element of excitement brought people together via Twitter. On July 18, @ desireefelker9 tweeted,“ Just in case y ' all forgot, countdown is in the single digits! @ TaylorHenry9 pumped?” Twitter provided an outlet where fans of the movie could communicate with each other and share their excitement about the movie through social media.
As discussed in previous components of our essay, the drip-drip-drip theory was a prominent method in raising awareness and popularity for the film. When a roof is leaking, it begins with a few drops of water. As the water begins to gradually leak, the structure of the roof is compromised and eventually the roof caves in. This can be applied to the social media portion of the marketing campaign. When the first social media drip, which was the release of the Bane photo, Warner Brothers began to gain power and control over Twitter. As time progressed, the second major component of the media campaign was released, which was the graffiti scavenger hunt. These major releases, as well as other smaller trailers and images created a situation where the excitement around the movie was heightened due to the small, gradual media releases. Throughout the entire media campaign, Warner Brothers gained control over their fan base, as well as expanded this fan base. Ultimately, excitement created through gradual releases, allowed people to connect with others ‟ excitement with the film.
There is no doubt that people were shocked and appalled by the tragic shooting by a man named James Holmes in Aurora, Colorado on July 20, 2012 during the midnight premiere of the film. Some people even became fearful of movie theatres or public places based on the responses from Twitter. However, none of these people blamed the movie or said they would refuse from that point to financially support the movie itself. The outcry was more in the form of anti-gun or pro-gun control sentiments, as well as a lot of support for the victims of the tragedy, shown with hashtags such as # godbless, or # prayforaurora, as well as many people calling for Warner Bros. to donate proceeds to the families of the victims( Appendix D). There were a small number of people that specifically said the event would prevent them from seeing the movie in theatres. This was a hard thing to analyze, because there were millions of tweets with the hashtag“# aurora”, with most of them using the hashtag to report news updates on the evolving case. However, we were specifically looking at tweets in which people said that they were still going to see the movie anyway or that the shooting had turned them off. It was extremely difficult to find a substantial number of tweets where people expressed enough fear to refrain from seeing the movie. We found far more positive tweets than negative, which was accomplished by using search terms instead of hashtags.