How Supergirl Influenced Wonder Woman’s Marketing

The approach to Wonder Woman‘s marketing has been a bit, well, light might be the best word to describe it. It seems though that is actually part of the plan, a plan that DC used to great effect in campaigning the CW’s Supergirl.

Time Warner chief marketing officer Kristen O’Hara spoke about their approach to Wonder Woman’s campaign at the Modern Customer Experience panel, saying “So one example that we have behind is something that happened about 15 months ago. We had a modest campaign that we were doing for the TV show Supergirl and we started to discuss, yes it was important to drive “tune into that show”, but one other amazing benefit from that campaign would be the amount of data we could collect about female superhero fans, which we hadn’t really done up to that point, and so a modest campaign generated I think 5 million female superhero fans in one week, that we were able to model over time to grow that audience leading up to 15 months later the release of the movie. Now certainly we aren’t just courting female fans, it’s a wide release, but that ability to think about segmentation and every consumer engagement with our content is an opportunity to learn about them and serve them better.

“I think when we as consumers or even we as marketers think about the heroic moments, we are thinking of moments like this one,” O’Hara said. At this point, the Wonder Woman trailer is shown in its entirety. “So, for us, certainly we do want the release of Wonder Woman in June to be a heroic moment for our company, but I think in a data driven world, the heroic marketing moments aren’t those big huge moments, they’re an aggregation of tiny little moments that happen over a long period of time that help us get smarter and smarter about our customers, that help us to create better experiences for them. And so in the case of Wonder Woman, this is a release that we started talking about two years ago, and when we started on the path I mentioned earlier, franchise management was going to be something we looked really closely at how data could help us do better.”

It’s a unique approach, but a television premiere is certainly a different beast compared to a major film. This might explain why some of the marketing push has been so light thus far, but who knows, it could very well start flooding in the next week or so. It will be interesting to see if it works, and if it is something Warner Bros. adopts for future superhero projects. You can find the entire video below.

Wonder Woman hits movie theaters around the world next summer when Gal Gadot returns as the title character in the epic action-adventure from director Patty Jenkins. Before she was Wonder Woman, she was Diana, princess of the Amazons, trained to be an unconquerable warrior. Raised on a sheltered island paradise, when an American pilot crashes on their shores and tells of a massive conflict raging in the outside world, Diana leaves her home, convinced she can stop the threat. Fighting alongside man in a war to end all wars, Diana will discover her full powers…and her true destiny.

Wonder Woman is directed by Patty Jenkins and is written by Allan Heinberg, Geoff Johns, and Zack Snyder. The film stars Gal Gadot (Diana Prince/Wonder Woman), Chris Pine (Steve Trevor), Robin Wright (General Antiope), Connie Nielsen (Queen Hippolyta), David Thewlis, Elena Anaya, Lucy Davis (Etta Candy), Danny Huston, Ewen Bremmer, Doutzen Kroes, Samantha Jo (Euboea), Florence Kasumba (Senator Acantha), Said Taghmaoui, Eleanor Matsuura (Epione), Emily Carey (Young Diana), and Lisa Loven Kongsli (Menalippe).

The DCEU continues with Wonder Woman opens in theaters on June 2, 2017, followed by Justice League on November 17, 2017; Aquaman on July 27, 2018; Shazam on April 5, 2019; Justice League 2 on June 14, 2019; Cyborg on April 3, 2020; and Green Lantern Corps on July 24, 2020. The Flash, The Batman, Dark Universe and Man of Steel 2 are currently without a release dates.

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