Universal Pictures was worried about its marketing campaign for its N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton. So the studio sought the help of Facebook in creating trailers that would be targeted to different audiences.
According to Business Insider, one problem Universal was worried about in its marketing campaign was that white Americans didn’t know about the legendary rap group. In a panel at South by Southwest, Doug Neil, executive vice president of digital marketing at Universal, and Jim Underwood, Facebook’s entertainment head, discussed the customized racial marketing for the film.
The studio expected the movie to do well with African American audiences, but what made it one of the surprising hits of last summer was its crossover appeal to white audiences.
Neil credited the wide appeal to the Facebook marketing effort. Universal created multiple trailers for different demographics. For instance, Neil said that the general population (referencing non-African Americans, and non-Hispanics) were not familiar with N.W.A., or Ice Cube as a rapper. So, the trailer did not mention the group specifically, and sold the movie as the story of the rise of Ice Cube and Dr. Dre, who they connect with as an actor and the face of Beats by Dre.
The trailer allegedly marketed to African Americans included the name N.W.A., and made mention of Compton. The trailer for the Hispanic market was shorter, and included flashing quotes in Spanish.
But according to UPROXX, after this story was reported, Facebook denied basing the marketing campaign strictly according to race:
“Facebook doesn’t let users identify based on race. Instead, the company looks for identifiers, starting with simple ones like language preference and onward to which pages you’ve liked and other more specific actions on the social network. That said, the company is only able to target ads based on what the user has shown an interest in seeing, which is not necessarily indicative of that person’s race.”
Straight Outta Compton grossed over $160 million at the U.S. box office, so the combination of a great film along with a creative marketing strategy catering to all audiences seems to have paid off for Universal. The studio will surely follow the same strategy for future films, and rival filmmakers likely took note of the successful campaign.
