A variety of film marketing efforts has been put in place to pump China's box office up.

During the 2023 Spring Festival holiday, about 129 million people went to the cinema, raising China's box office takings to 6.76 billion yuan (about 984.3 million U.S. dollars).

Film producers believe that marketing campaigns are necessary to boost the current movie market.

"People always say: 'Good wine needs no bush.' However, good wine is getting harder to be spotted. Every day, people are exposed to promotions from all kinds of information channels. Therefore, it's quite difficult for your works to be heard and seen and interest the audience."said Gong Ge'er, producer of the movie "The Wandering Earth 2".

Much innovation has been made in terms of timing, content and forms of movie promotion. Even roadshows, which are very commonly used in marketing, are having new modes. Schools, universities and medium-sized or even small cities have become targets of movie roadshows.

"Many people can enjoy the same story and feel the same emotion in the same environment, which I think is a good way for the movie to interact with the audience. Thus, I would like to have roadshows and interactions with viewers to promote my movie. When I get feedbacks from the audience, I also gain the energy which encourages me to continue making more movies," said Dong Chengpeng, director of the movie "Post-Truth".

Currently, the internet is using its power to improve marketing effectiveness through digitalization as well as product development and refinement.

"We will recruit some movie-goers to watch the film before it is officially released. By simulating a real movie-watching experience, we intend to receive feedbacks about the movie. Based on these responses, we can formulate an analysis report and then deliver the results to producers, creators and the marketing team. On the one hand, the content of the movie can be adjusted based on those feedbacks; and on the other hand, such word of mouth will help the marketing team to generate strategies, dig out the highlights of the movie and define the target group," said Mu Chen, director of the Lighthouse Research Institute with Alibaba Pictures.

After the optimization of the COVID-19 policies, the spring of China's movie industry has once again arrived. Movie producers and creators intend to use touching stories, sincere sentiments and high-quality contents to win over the audience.

"Cinemas are reopened now. This means offline activities could be more diversified. This has provided us with many opportunities, allowing us to be creative and implement various innovative ideas. In this way, more people will see us and watch Chinese films," said Du Hao, CEO of Dark Horse marketing company.