Component 01 Section B: how the promoting media set products use synergy and convergence to promote one property across film, marketing and a tie-in video game, the role of the global conglomerate, and how cross-media promotion reaches and persuades audiences.

What this dot point is asking

Component 01 Section B is fundamentally about how a global conglomerate promotes one property across media forms. This dot point covers synergy (promoting one property across many connected forms), convergence (the forms and industries coming together), the role of the global conglomerate, and how cross-media promotion reaches and persuades audiences. The key skill is explaining how the set products work together as a promotional system, not analysing each in isolation.

Synergy and convergence

These three concepts explain Section B. The conglomerate's ownership of many forms lets it promote a property across all of them (synergy); convergence is the condition that makes this seamless. The set products (poster, trailer, tie-in game) are the evidence of synergy in action.

How the conglomerate promotes a property

A global conglomerate uses its scale to promote one property across forms.

• It owns film studios, games companies and merchandising, so it can make and promote a property in each.
• It uses synergy: the film, the marketing and the tie-in game all sell the same property, reinforcing one another.
• It uses convergence: the forms and platforms come together, so the audience meets the property in many places.

This maximises reach, exposure and profit, and reinforces the brand.

Cross-media promotion and the audience

The point of cross-media promotion is to reach and persuade audiences.

• The property appears across many platforms and forms, so the audience encounters it repeatedly.
• Each encounter reinforces the brand and drives interest in the others (the game advertises the film; the film drives interest in the game).
• The promotion targets the audience wherever they already are (cinemas, games, online, merchandise).

The analytical move is to explain how the products work together to reach the target audience, not to describe each one alone.

Examples in context

How this is examined

Component 01 Section B examines the industry and audience of the promoting media set products, including extended responses on synergy and cross-media promotion. The reliable move is to establish the conglomerate, show synergy across the products, link to convergence, and explain how cross-media promotion reaches and persuades the audience, reaching a judgement.

Try this

Q1. Explain what is meant by cross-media promotion. [3 marks]

• What the marker wants. Promoting one property across several media forms and platforms (film, marketing, a tie-in game), so each promotes the others and the property reaches audiences everywhere (AO1).

Q2. Explain how a global conglomerate uses synergy to promote a property. [6 marks]

• Cue. Explain that the conglomerate owns many forms and promotes one property across all of them (film, marketing, tie-in game), each promoting the others to maximise reach, anchored in the set products (AO1 and AO2).