Research - What is a Teaser Trailer?

What is a teaser trailer?
As previously mentioned, teaser trailers are essential for causing hype around a particular film. By creating teaser trailers for their films, distributors are able to reach a wider (and often international) audience months before the initial release of the films main trailer, and will consequently build hype towards the films release. Unlike theatrical trailers, teasers typically have a running time of less than a minute. Although noticeably different from a theatrical trailer in terms of the duration time, a teaser trailer will introduce the audience to the main character(s) as well as to the basic plot of the film. On the other hand film trailers often provide the audience with a greater insight into the plot and will develop the characters further.
Teaser trailers are often released long in advance of the film, so as to 'tease' the audience.

The history of teaser trailers
The teaser trailer for the 1978 Superman film by Richard Donner is one of the earliest examples of a teaser used to promote a feature film. The purpose of this campaign was to reinvigorate interest in its release due to the film being a year behind schedule. However, in more recent years teaser trailers have acted as initial starting points of a film's marketing campaign, followed shortly after by its feature trailer.

Implications and impact of teaser trailers

As mentioned, the main objective of a teaser trailer is to increase hype around a films release. Film companies can attract a wide audience months in advance of the distribution of the product, causing potential audiences to become interested in watching the film before much information is even disclosed about it. Although teaser trailers can be a good marketing strategy for conglomerate film companies, many independent film makers are unable to create teasers due to low marketing budgets. They often lack in the capital to invest in creating teaser trailers and are therefore unable to raise as much profit as conglomerates are able to achieve. 

Advancements in digital technology have allowed film trailers (and teasers) to be more effective in their promotional purposes. Where teaser and theatrical trailers were usually shown before a feature film at the cinema, they can now be seen through advertisements before YouTube videos as well as on DVD's and Blu-ray disks. This is known as push-marketing, although we can commonly access teasers online simply through pull-marketing, where we can source the teaser trailers ourselves on YouTube. Teaser trailers can therefore be exhibited and distributed in various ways. These technological advancements allow conglomerate film companies to reach a wide international tent-pole audience due to the fact that they can promote their films across the internet, through television and at the cinema, although this is generally because they have large enough budgets to do so. On the other hand, independent film companies can struggle to get their film's noticed by a wider audience, and hence can only reach a specific, local audience.