The role of technological convergence in starwars

"Evaluate the role of digital technologies in the marketing and consumption of products in the media area you have studied."

"Digital technologies play an increasingly important role in the distribution, marketing and consumption of media products in the film industry. One film that has fully utilised modern digital technologies and taken advantage of technological convergence is Disney's Star Wars: The Force Awakens.


One of the ways Star Wars: The Force Awakens has used digital technology is through their creative starwars app. Starwars has cleverly made a free app for people to download on their smartphones and keep up with the newest starwars news. The app allows you to do many things such as take photos of yourself and edit it onto starwars characters. It also allows you to unlock 3D characters from starwars to take pictures with and it looks like the 3D projection is real. These photos can be shared onto social media such as Facebook or twitter for your friends to see. Furthermore this helps brand recognition and encourages other people to download the app to try out its cool features and maybe become starwars fanatics. The app is a great way to advertise their movies themselves. The app has a link to other starwars spinoffs such as the children animated show "Star Wars Rebels" and Disney channel website. The app is a very effective way to introduce and engage users to new starwars products and shows. 

The app also manages to get sales through the app as they promote new shows and keeps you upto date with a live countdown to big releases such as Starwars The Force Awakens. Users can also buy tickets directly from the app to the releases which is good for them as they make more money.

The app has a huge target audience ranging from very young children to old men who have been starwars fans since young. The app has many things that people of all ages can get involved with such as the games for example the one where you 'wield a lightsaber and hone your skills against a training remote'. For older people the app has cool factional stuff they could enjoy with exciting and funny sound clips from their favourite starwars character.

The app creates excitement for the new releases by only showing the users sneak peaks to get them curious and want to find out more and they do this by watching the movies with they purchase tickets for and starwars makes money.

Another important way digital technology is used to promote starwars is through social media for example they have a twitter account which has 1.75M followers Suggesting this is a good way for the starwars producers to send information to their audiences and fans about their new releases or events. 

Twitter can be used for the fans as well as they can ask questions and they can have them answered by the team. This is very helpful for both the starwars team and the customers as they can engage with customers and get feedback and ask fans how they feel about their new ideas. 

They can promote their brand on their twitter account by posting new things to their 1.75M followers who then share the tweet or retweet the tweet and can even get their products and shows trending. This is very good for promoting products as a lot of people on twitter come across their posts.

Starwars target audience on twitter would be more teenagers and above as kids wouldn't really use twitter. This to some extent is a downside as it narrows the target audience but the people on twitter can show their kids and tell them about it.