Hungry for The Hunger Games: when fans become participants
By Fiona van Iersel
Minerva Empowerment
E-Services Marketing
5 June 2025

Know your market. The Hunger Games began as a beloved book series, and what do readers love more than losing themselves completely in a world? To me, the Catching Fire campaign stood out because it invited that immersion rather than feeling like a conventional movie launch.

Alongside the familiar tools of trailers and posters, Lionsgate built a pull strategy around the world of Panem. Capitol Couture, a fashion blog presented as part of the fictional Capitol, and in-world social content blurred the boundary between fan and narrative. That was the clever part: you could feel involved before taking your seat in the cinema.

This is where transmedia storytelling connects with customer engagement. Emotional and cognitive involvement can support loyalty and advocacy (Brodie et al., 2011). Lionsgate did not simply market at us; it gave us ways to play along.

The four dimensions—persistent, pervasive, participatory and personalised—help explain why the approach felt so immersive. Persistence came from continuing content and narrative extensions. As a fan, I felt that the story did not simply stop between releases.

Pervasiveness came from the campaign’s presence across platforms, including Instagram, YouTube, Tumblr and Pinterest. The important point was not the number of channels alone. It was the consistency of Panem’s voice. Jenkins (2006) argues that each platform should make its own contribution to a transmedia story; otherwise, the audience is merely encountering the same advert repeatedly.

Participation was especially powerful. Fans could behave like stylists, rebels or ambassadors, responding to fictional media and creative challenges. That is the appeal of co-creation: people contribute to the experience instead of only receiving it (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004).

Personalisation was the weaker dimension in my view. Fans could find material that resonated with them, but that is different from deep individual customisation. The experience felt more mass-personalised than one-to-one. Citizen profiles, district identities or game-like choices could have offered a more distinctive route through the world.

I understand the decision to concentrate on existing fans. Their enthusiasm gave the campaign an audience willing to share and sustain it. That fits the logic of focusing resources on strong advocates rather than trying to persuade everyone equally (Kotler et al., 2021). It should not become an excuse to assume that age or gender determines who belongs. I took my husband; for the next film, he took me.

The strongest elements were the coherent fictional voice and the recognition given to fan creativity. The Capitol’s propaganda felt eerie enough to make the world believable, while fan art and participation made the audience visible within it. That combination helped the campaign feel like a community rather than a sequence of advertisements.

There was room to broaden the experience beyond screens. More physical events, district booths or offline participation could have welcomed people who were less digitally engaged. Media richness provides one way to think about those additions (Daft & Lengel, 1986), though an experiential event brings costs that a social post does not.

For a follow-up campaign, I would keep the in-world tone, the fictional media outlets and the fan participation. I would experiment with interactive rebellion missions through AR or VR, or let fans choose a role and receive different story updates. Those are creative possibilities, not a reason to abandon simpler ways of joining in. The world should have entrances for more than one kind of fan.

Could this work outside entertainment? I see possibilities in fashion, travel, technology and even financial services, if the brand can build an emotionally meaningful world in which the audience has a role. A lifestyle story can give people something to participate in, not just something to purchase.

The practical questions are audience, product and resources. Does this audience want immersion? Is the product tied to identity or emotion? Can the business sustain creative direction, community management and platform expertise? The investment may pay off up to a point, but the next useful question is where the extra complexity stops adding value.

I think customers increasingly want a role in the brands they care about. Catching Fire makes the possibility vivid: promotion can become an invitation to participate, provided that the invitation is worth accepting.