Movie Marketing Madness: The Fantastic Mr. Fox

No one has ever accused, I wouldn’t think, director of Wes Anderson of lacking a unique cinematic vision or style. If you’ve seen any one of his movies and are then shown, without any setup or information, a scene from another you’ll probably be able to peg it as an Anderson movie pretty quickly. The overly stoic characters who express themselves with eyebrows and sighs. The patterned wallpaper on the sets. The father issues. They’re all hallmarks and put them together and you’ve got an easily-identifiable Anderson film.

Make what you will of that style but I’m a fan, if for no other reason than because so few directors in this day and age actually have such a distinctive signature that they put on their movies. Not that other directors are hacks, but those who you can pick out of a line-up are few and far between. So if nothing else you have to stand up and salute the fact that he’s willing to indulge the passions he so obviously feels and break away from the pack in doing so.

Anderson is now bringing that vision, which he’s honed in traditional live-action arena, to the world of animation. The Fantastic Mr. Fox is an adaptation of a book from Roald Dahl, the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. And to bring the book to life Anderson has chosen to tell the story through stop-motion animation, a brave and interesting choice not only because it’s outside the conventional wisdom (which, despite recent films like 9 and Coraline, says CG is the only real option) but because he’s never done it before. As we’ll see as we get into the campaign that’s going to become an issue in some regards. But let’s start at the top.

The Posters

The first poster for the movie is, well, kind of awesome. It shows all the main characters dwelling just below the surface of the Earth, something that’s conveyed by the human legs at the top of the image, above the underground dwelling with all the animals.

Two things are made clear in the poster:

First, that there’s a loving family at the center of the story, something that’s conveyed through the image of the husband and wife in sort of a dancing embrace and the playful kids around them. In addition to that there are colorful supporting characters, including the business-skunk with a drink in hand and the explorer gopher.

Second, we’re immediately clued in to the fact that those people are in some peril, a situation made clear through the fact that those humans above our main cast are all sporting shovels, with one even holding a couple sticks of dynamite. So that’s the conflict in the movie.

The fact that the source book comes from the author of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is given precedence over Anderson’s being the director, hinting at the notion that Fox is marketing this more to the family movie crowd than fans of Rushmore, Tennenbaums and Anderson’s other movies. He’s a major component in many of the campaign’s other elements so he’s not being abandoned but in this regard the studio is reaching for an audience outside his core group of fans.

A series of seven character posters came next, taking many of the primary characters from the movie and putting them against a cool pop art kind of background and giving each a bit of explanatory text at the top. Since this is an animated film these posters are designed to show off the names of the cast in the movie as well as give an additional peak at the look of the characters.

The Trailers

The first trailer is all about introducing the audience to the look and feel of the movie, as well as giving a quick introduction to most of the main characters. There’s a small hint that Mr. Fox and his family and friends are engaging in some sort of attempt to do…something. While there are lots of clips of them planning and plotting it’s never made entirely clear what it is. That’s alright, though, since it’s pretty charming as it is. The distinctive Anderson look is obvious, as is the fact that the voice cast is putting its all into the performances that drive the characters.

The second does dive further into the movie’s story, showing that the adventures being planned by Fox and friends are an attempt to foil the plans of three nasty, mean humans. We get a bit more background on the characters and their motivations, as well as some pretty good jokes about the world these characters live in. It also contains more credits for the cast and a few pull quotes from the early reviews the movie has generated. It still very much has a good look at the production style but it’s more traditional it how it lays out a case for a movie with engaging characters and not just a cool look.

Online

The movie’s official website opens, after making like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape and digging tunnels, with the poster key art recreated on-screen.

Around the screen are various options. First there’s a promotion with Fandango that gives you a free iTunes download of one of the songs from the soundtrack if you buy tickets in advance. We’re also prompted to “Read the Fantastic Reviews,” which opens a pop-up with critic’s quotes and, surprisingly, links to those stories so you can read the full review.

There’s also a link to “Make This Thanksgiving Fantastic.” That opens a new site where you can play the Feast Like a Fox” game, which actually verges on incorporating the augmented reality technology so many people are talking about in that you control how many plates of food Mr. Fox eats by moving your hands in front of your webcam. You can also send a movie-themed e-vite to your friends and family to have them over for the holiday.

Back to the main site, it’s divided into two big categories – Meet the Characters and About the Film.

Under Meet the Characters you can access most of the main characters and, when you click on their names, you get a description of who they are as well as a Wallpaper and Icon you can download with their face on it.

About the Film is where most of the traditional content lies.

“The Film” contains a two-sentence synopsis of the plot that, given how much thought seems to have gone into other aspects of the site, seems a bit brief and disappointing.

The “Cast” and “Crew” sections have the career histories of the stars and creative folks – including Dahl in the latter section – that contributed to the movie.

Both Trailers and two Featurettes can be found under “Video.” and there are about 15 or so stills, a mix of movie photos and behind-the-scenes shots, in the “Gallery.” “Downloads” collects the Wallpapers and Icons that are individually available on each character’s featured page.

The “Fun” section has an interesting mix of offerings. There’s a link to the Dig Deeper blog, which seems to be made up of video posts and posted concept and character art detailing the film’s production. There’s also the Whackbat game that’s played within the movie. If you’ve watched the trailer or video spot that includes this game you’ll know that there’s no reasonably explaining the rules, so suffice it to say you try to hit the flaming pinecone just right and in the right direction and then the players thankfully move themselves around the field. There’s also a link to the iPhone app that’s available for $.99 in the iTunes store.

Finally on the site there’s “Partners” where you’ll find links to Borders, though just to the main page and not a movie-dedicated section, and a page called The Wonderful World of Roald Dahl, which shows all the tie-in books that have been produced and which you can buy, all of which are available on the Roald Dahl official site.

The Fox Searchlight site also has links to much of the same stuff as well as a prompt to engage in the Fantastic Plan. Like the “Feast” game, this one lets you control how fast Fox and his friends dig through the ground and to the farms of their nemeses. If you get there fast enough you can unlock exclusive content like Wallpapers and such.

The Searchlight site also has some of their usual social-media friendly content like a stream of Twitter updates that include mentions of the movie, links to recent press coverage, plenty of pictures and video and other good stuff. A lot of that is then replicated on the movie’s Facebook page.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

Aside from Border on the official website I haven’t heard about any cross-promotional partners that have teamed with Fox Searchlight for the movie.

But there has been plenty of advertising. I think I’ve seen a smattering of TV spots, mostly trimmed down versions of the trailers, as well as plenty of online ads. These have mostly recreated the poster key art. These have ranged in execution from pre-load ads that take over a page as you’re trying to visit it to simple banners or square units.

Media and Publicity

Since the animation style for this movie is so different from what audiences have come to expect over the last few years there was also a featurette posted to Apple that showed off how the puppets, their costumes, the sets and everything else was created and the labor and love that went into the creation of this unique world. It also showed how much of the voice work was captured in real-life locations that mimicked those being created for the movie, so a scene in a truck actually had Clooney recording his dialogue in a truck and such like that. It’s very much an effort to get people talking about the movie and its unique style and, based on the amount of pick-up this featurette got on movie blogs and elsewhere, I think it succeeded in achieving that goal.

While there was plenty of buzz around the release of each successive piece of marketing material, the next major bump came in the wake of a story about how Anderson had, for all intents and purposes, directed the movie via email (LA Times, 10/11/09), something that apparently was more than a little upsetting to the crew working on the stop-motion animation. That story had other elements as well, but that’s the one that most everyone who read it picked up on and, because it was placed at the top of the story, that was obviously the intent of the writers.

That story appeared just days before an industry junket was held in London where some of the biggest industry writers were invited to sit down with the film’s cast and crew and lob softball questions. And then the director’s approach and interaction with his crew was revisited a month later (LA Times, 11/13/09) for, really, no apparent reason than to be able to print a bunch of outtakes from the first interview. It was ostensibly about Anderson’s exacting style and attention to detail but really came off as a half-hearted hit piece that had an odd tone to it.

Luckily there was plenty of more positive press around the movie, from interviews with the cast and crew to exclusive content and other more general musings and buzz from people looking forward to seeing it.

Overall

There is a lot to like about this campaign, especially if you’re a fan of Wes Anderson’s style and story-telling. You’ve got dry humor, kids who just want to please their slightly disconnected but generally well-meaning fathers and an elaborate plan that winds up bringing everyone together in the end. What’s not to like?

But what this campaign does is tell the story well, and that’s ultimately the challenge most campaigns fail to meet. The trailers, posters and even the website certainly make the case for the movie as a pleasant and entertaining way to spend an afternoon at the movies, which is all you can really ask of it.

It certainly is reliant on the hooks of not only Anderson’s name-recognition but also that of the star-studded cast, though even that comes loaded with the fact that many of them are Anderson troupe regulars (Schwartzman, Murray, Wison, etc). But even then it manages to achieve the secondary, though no less important goal of making the movie appealing to families, especially families who are either already familiar with Dahl’s source book or who are looking for an alternative to the computer-animated, pop-culture reference-filled fare put out by many of the studios.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• In the UK there were McDonald’s Happy Meals that tied in to the movie as well as promotions in Gap Kids stores there that gave kids activity sheets to fill out and create with and try to win tickets to the movie.

Movie Marketing Madness: Me and Orson Welles

“The theater…the theater…what happened to the theater?”

That’s the opening line to a song titled “Choreography” that’s part of the holiday classic film White Christmas. Featuring all sorts of what was, at the time, modern dance, the routine basically wonders what happened to the classic theater style in a time of interpretive dance and other craziness.

In 2009 there’s a similar sort of “what happened to what was formerly called the ‘legitimate stage’” going on. Serious shows and edgy fare are few and far between as movie adaptations and revivals crowd out any stage big enough to be worth measuring.

So it’s an interesting time to look back at one of the all-time giants of stage AND cinema mounting a production of Shakespeare’s Julies Caesar. This look comes in Me and Orson Welles, the new film from director Richard Linklater. The movie brings the audience in to the story from the perspective of a young man, played by Zac Efron, who falls bass-ackwards into a role in Welles’ production and who then must navigate not only the formidable presence of Welles himself but also the road to romance with a young production assistant played by Claire Danes.

The Posters

The poster is a mixed bag. While it seems clear on its face – the theater audience, the obvious love triangle, the fact that everyone is literally in Welles’ shadow – it actually becomes less so when you look more closely. That love triangle isn’t positioned into any sort of stare-down or anything, they’re all looking off-camera at someone who’s pointing to an LOLCat on their computer. And the inclusion of Welles there means he is literally standing in his own shadow. And Efron looks like he’s just awoken from a coma.

But it does work from a consistency standpoint in that, as we’ll see, it matches the trailer’s look and feel pretty well. And it is suitably dramatic – especially the title treatment – and so represents the theatrical tone of Welles legacy and such.

The Trailers

Similar to the poster, the trailer certainly puts its stake in the “Theatrical” category in terms of presentation. We’re introduced at first to the character played by Efron and the basic plot point that this period we’re watching him through is the week that changed his life. We’re also given a clear look into the character of Welles and how demanding and egotistical he can be. But it’s the blooming romance between Efron’s and Danes’ characters that moves things along and which will obviously create some of the tension of the movie as her affections become a point of contention between the young genius and the young nobody.

But the biggest thing that comes through is that, despite who the people might be, they’re all just actors around Welles and his room-filling personality. We get glimpses of him in the radio studio and a quick shot of him pulling a little magic to impress a lady. As Welles himself shouts to those assembled on stage, they are all there simply to fulfill his vision and that’s more or less how the characters in the movie are presented as well.

Online

The movie’s official website starts off by asking whether or not you’re in the U.S. or the U.K. Once you choose appropriately – in this case the U.S. – you get thrown into the site where you can view the marketing content.

Up first is “Trailer” which is exactly that, the movie’s one trailer. The section does come, though, with a Clearspring widget that you can put on your own site if you’d care to.

Next is “Synopsis” and there you’ll find just a simple two-paragraph recap of the movie’s story. “Press” has pull quotes from a half-dozen newspaper critics praising the movie, though without links it’s impossible to see the context those quotes appear in.

“Gallery” has, by my count, 22 photos, mostly still from the film but also including a couple of behind-the-scenes shots with director Linklater.”Cast and Crew” has the credits and career history of those who made the film happen.

Finally “Downloads” has Wallpapers either for your PC or your Mobile device as well as a handful of Icons you can use for your IM chats.

There’s also a great section that’s only linked to at the bottom, outside of the rest of the menu, called “About Orson.” There Linklater posts archival pictures of Welles, including a shot of him on the stage of the production the movie depicts, photos of books and scripts and a couple of film snippets. It’s not a timeline, but it’s very cool, with Linklater writing short descriptions of the items we’re looking at. I love these sorts of sections on the sites of historic movies and this adds a lot of flavor to the movie, showing that it’s based on facts and research and not just made up out of whole-cloth.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

Little to nothing that I’ve seen. I may have come across one or two online ads but that’s about it – nothing on the TV front and nothing in the way of promotional partnerships.

Media and Publicity

The movie had its coming out party at the 2008 Toronto Film Festival to some decent buzz but then languished without a distributor for almost a year until it was finally announced a deal had been struck to have Freestyle Release distribute it in the U.S. When it did reemerge, that deal showed it wasn’t a traditional release partnership. Instead there was quite a bit of the DIY mindset behind it (Los Angeles Times, 9/15/09), with the focus being on the eventual DVD release since no mini-major had the interest or the bandwidth to distribute it.

The original War of the Worlds broadcast, one of Welles’ early career-making achievements, was “presented by” the movie on the date of its original airing. This re-broadcast was online only and not available for later streaming, which is disappointing, but it’s still cool that they did it anyway.

Overall

I think the biggest problem with this campaign is that it feels…tacked on? The thought that keeps running through my head here is that after sitting in limbo for so long the campaign, once started, seems kind of rushed and not at a level that it should be for a new movie from one of the major directors of the last 15 years. Part of that is certainly coming from the fact that, instead of the support of a major (or minor) studio it’s being released in what is a more truly “independent” – albeit with significant infrastructure – way.

But what there is of the campaign is pretty good. I like the trailer a lot and feel like it speaks to a couple different audiences – those interested in Welles and his history, Efron fans, romantic moviegoers – effectively. And while I might have nitpicky issues with the poster it’s not bad and I certainly get, and even think it hits, what points it was going for. The website is a tad more disappointing, but what are you going to do about that?

Dollars

So if we finished all our Christmas shopping two weeks ago does that mean our spending won’t be counted in the annual hand-wringing over retail sales figures? Probably not, but it should be. That’s just one small reason why the news is broken, because all these breathless stories over the state of the economy don’t look beyond the press releases that are distributed by various parties with skin in the game.

Non-debate

Regardless of where we might differ on the Hagar/Roth debate, I think we can all agree that Steve much better than Joe on “Blue’s Clues.”

Social media spending

My latest post on VoceNation:

I’m very much not going to be outraged or shocked by a recent report showing Chief Marketing Officers spend less than 10 percent of their budgets on social media efforts. Compared to other marketing channels, social media is pretty low cost, especially if you’re still in the experimental phase and seeing what’s going to work.

Consider the cost of running a Twitter program: Setting up profiles on Twitter costs nothing and you’re probably tapping into the time of employees who are volunteering to take part. So the primary cost would be in hiring a world class of communications architects to coordinate the program, monitor success and pull regular metrics and that’s about it. That’s an important step that shouldn’t be overlooked, but it’s a pretty simple one and one that will have long-term benefits if you trust their guidance.

Compare that to the cost of running a nationwide print campaign. Between creative agencies, media-buying shops and the internal people who need to approve everything the costs add up quickly and in big chunks.

Obviously there are social media programs that are more expensive, especially as you start to ramp up the scale and add things like blog design and development, but overall you’re working with a lot of existing assets.

So I’m not concerned about budget numbers right now. Dollars go where there are proven results and if, like we are, you’re showing those consistently with the programs you recommend and coordinate the budget will come.

Leaving the Dollhouse

So yes, I’m disappointed “Dollhouse” is being canceled. Not surprised, but disappointed.

Considering this is a show that was demonstrably kept along for as long as it was through the support it received on non-TV channels – Hulu, iTunes – it would have been great if Fox had picked this as a test case for new distribution thinking. Put it on at 2AM Wednesday morning for people to record to their DVRs and continue to distribute it through multiple channels online. See if there’s enough support for it to keep doing *that* and let the show live another season.

I’ve been making this case since “Arrested Development” and continue to think it’s an idea worth trying if there was a network brave enough.

At least the remainder of the current season has been guaranteed to run so Whedon can close it out as he sees fit. Besides, what I really want is to know what comes after the events of the DVD-only “Epitaph One.”

Just awesome

One of the reasons FeedBurner has always been among my favorite companies – even post Google purchase – is that the people who work there are obviously insane. Log into FeedBurner and check out what appears after the “My Feeds…” and you’ll know what I mean.

So in addition to being thrilled that Google Analytics will soon be displaying feed stats – a huge point of integration that’s incredibly useful to publishers – I just have to stand up and applaud the headline of the post announcing that integration.

Movie Marketing Madness: 2012

There’s nothing some filmmakers love more than ending the world. The excitement they feel over making landmarks fall down, seas boil over and mass amounts of humanity be wiped out in an instant is so palpable you can practically feel their erection as you sit in the theater seats.

The ability to destroy the Earth has become easier not by the rise of nuclear weapons but by the advances in computer-generated animation. Asking computer operators to make those pixels dance in a way that mimics a massive building falling down seems to be the primary skills possessed by some directors. One of those, of course, is the much-maligned Roland Emmerich. Emmerich is one of the brains behind Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and other movies that have lots of people running away from various matte paintings and green-screens.

His latest is what brings us here today. 2012 is purportedly based on a reading of the ancient Mayan calendar that pegs December 21st, 2012 as the day the world will come to an end. And as with his previous films the focus is placed simultaneously on the world at large and on one small family – complete with requisite strife to heighten the drama – as things unfold around them.

The Posters

The first poster for the movie was a pretty simple teaser, with just the movie’s title treatment and a little bit of text on a black background. Above the title was the copy “Who will be left behind?” which not only plays into the idea that it’s the apocolypse and there will be survivors but also comes with the associated correlation to the “Left Behind” series of books that are popular with people because they pretend to be based on Biblical teachings.

The second, released shortly after director Emmerich appeared at Comic-Con, recreated an image from one of the trailers that shows a major metropolitan area – I think it’s Los Angeles – buckling like sidewalk blocks against the tremendous pressure of the entire ocean rising up and flooding it combined with massive earthquakes. As I said, it ties directly into the trailer footage but also carries more than a little bit of similarities with the posters for his last end-of-the-world flick The Day After Tomorrow, which also showed a city getting the shaft from Mother Nature.

More teasers then followed that continued not only the theme of this campaign but also Emmerich’s tradition of mass chaos, with each one of the three showing the rampant destruction and death toll being visited upon a series of locations around the world.

A later theatrical poster took the action and made it a little more personal while at the same time recreating one of the images from the first teaser trailer. This one features the same “We were warned” copy the rest of them sport but has a Tibetan monk standing at the top of the Himalayan mountains watching helplessly as the waves of water come crashing over the mountains in front of him. It works alright in that it gives a little bit of a sense of scale (as much as is possible with these movies) to the events and, because it harkens back to the teaser trailer, more or less brings the campaign full circle. It’s also a little less scary for the audience to see this level of decimation being visited on far-away mountain ranges than urban landscapes and so is slightly more accessible for the general viewer.

The Trailers

The teaser trailer features precious little about the movie’s plot, other than it’s going to revolve once again around Emmerich ending the human race in some way, shape or form. A lone Tibetian monk races along the mountain tops before entering a small building where he begins ringing what is presumably a warning bell. It’s then we start to see what he’s running from, a huge wave of water that’s coming over the mountain, a wave that eventually overcomes the small outpost.

In between all that are various bits of text about how the leaders of the world wouldn’t warn us if they knew the end of the world were coming. It’s ended with a prompt to find out the truth not be visiting a website but by searching for “2012.”

That’s an interesting strategy to take. It’s been used by a few companies in the past – encouraging people to Google or otherwise search for a brand name – but this is the first time for a movie that I can recall. And they obviously did their legwork before launching the trailer since a search of Google for that did bring up movie-related sites among the first few results, with more general paranoia links placing lower on the page.

The second trailer went more deeply into the story that we’ll be following in the film. It starts with a recap of how the Mayan’s warned us 2012 would be the end all be all before showing us the loving family that’s fathered by John Cusack, who while driving his kids finds fiery meteors raining down around him.

That’s the beginning of the badness, as we then get shot after shot of 200 foot waves crashing across the land, shore lines buckling under the pressure, landmarks crushing thousands of people and other such destruction. As that plays out we see Cusack is valiantly trying to lead his family to safety, a mission that takes them on planes, in cars and dangerously close to death. All while the government officials bicker about species continuity and who gets to survive.

There was a third trailer released after the long-form preview (discussed below) that starts off roughly the same way but features a lot of footage from that extended preview. We get more of Cusack trying to rescue his family from the coming destruction.

After that more singular focus the trailer then expands once again to show the devastation being wrought around the globe as monuments and come toppling down and survivors struggle to stay alive.

Online

The official website opens with the first full trailer playing over a background that’s pulled from that trailer, the image of the USS John F. Kennedy being tossed on to the White House.

The first content area is “About the Film” and that leads off with a Synopsis that’s two sentences long and simply restates the premise – the world is ending but there are survivors, which doesn’t really make sense – without going any deeper. Cast and Crew profiles are here providing background on the players. Downloads also lives here, which is a bit unusual since it usually gets its own section. Wallpapers, Buddy Icons and a Twitter Background are available there. Finally there’s a Gallery – again usually a stand-alone area – that contains a batch of images you can view but, of course, not download.

Let’s talk about that Twitter background for a second. that’s the first time, unless I’m mistaken, I’ve seen that offered on a movie’s site. Offering that to people is obviously a way to get those excited about the movie to spread the word in an organic way. And it’s simply the latest iteration of a strategy that’s been around since 2005, when movie sites promoted MySpace skins you could add to your profile.

While it’s pretty low cost to create and offer that same sort of thing for Twitter it does fly in the face of how people are using Twitter, which is vastly different than how they used MySpace. Website usage for Twitter is, according to most metrics, relatively low compared to its actual user base. That’s because you can use Twitter through text messaging or by using any number of third-party applications. So there’s very little need among experienced or higher-level users to ever hit the website. Which means exposure to this is going to be fairly low since 2012 enthusiasts are a subset of a subset of a subset.

Again, there’s no downside in offering this for download – it probably took about 10 hours to create and test, maximum. But Twitter backgrounds are, in my view, better used as part of corporate branding campaigns, where a company wants to bring a certain look over to Twitter or make sure that multiple official accounts are branded consistently. Not that there’s much downside here – the low cost means any adoption is a win, more or less – but it’s not going to get the same impact as even the preceding MySpace skins used to.

Getting back to the website, the next section here is “Video.” There you’ll find the Teaser and first full Trailer, but not the last one, which is kind of odd. There’s also the music video for the song from Adam Lambert (more on this later) and a whole blog with multiple video entries on the movie’s visual effects. There’s also one called the 2012 Movie Experience, which walks through the alternate reality game that was played in the year or so leading up to the movie and which I’ll cover shortly.

The next section promotes the couple of “iPhone Apps” that took the user through their paces as they were asked to try and survive the end of the world. One of those apps was more about testing your survival skills while the other was more of a recreation of the movie’s storyline as you tried to outrun natural disasters. After that was a “Game” that tested your survival skill knowledge. And finally the “2012 Escape Sweepstakes” tests your ability to recall something from the movie’s trailer and enters you to win a cruise vacation.

The movie’s Facebook and MySpace pages contain trailers, photos and other information on the film and promote the iPhone games, ARG sites and other elements.

Going back to the ARG, listed on the site under the “The Experience” heading, there are a couple main hubs that then have some offshoots. While the entire game has been a little hard to follow – largely because there’s little actual interactivity from the audience – it has been wide-ranging.

The core component has been the Institute for Human Continuity, an organization that is working to make sure the human race survives the apocalyptic events of 2012. Balancing that is ThisIsTheEnd.com, the website for Charlie Frost, a paranoid conspiracy theorist who’s also convinced the end of the world is coming but who questions the IHC’s efforts. Finally there’s FarewellAtlantis, the official site for the book written by John Cusack’s character about the Mayan prophecy of 2012. The fact that he’s written a book about it kind of makes the surprise his character seems to experience over what’s happening seem less credible. Shouldn’t he have been more…prepared? Or at least aware?

In fact, as Liz Miller at NewTeeVee points out, the fact that these organizations exist at all seems to run counter to the logic that’s used within the movie itself. The ARG seems to posit that there are plenty of people on the ball about what’s happening and are preparing for it, while the movie says it’s just the secretive governments that are scrambling to put covert plans into motion.

Most all of these have YouTube channels, Twitter feeds, Facebook profiles and more in an effort to not only blanket the web in content but also create a narrative arc that leads up to the movie. The problem is that, as I alluded to earlier, there doesn’t seem to be a tremendous amount of interactivity in the program. You can follow the arc of the story but mainly passively, with very few points where you can play along.

Instead of trying to recap them all and failing I’ll simply share the “Experience” video that’s on the website, which does a decent job of all that, though it’s painful in how it alternates between playing the ARG straight and then shifting to tongue-in-cheek mode.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

With a movie of this size it shouldn’t be surprising that there was a ton of advertising done for it. TV spots have been almost unavoidable in the weeks leading up to release. Most all of them are shorter versions of the trailer and show off the same action sequences, including the flight between crumbling buildings and the manic drive as the street collapses behind the car. While I’m sure there are plenty who have seen these and been excited at the prospect of so many special effects being presented to them but in general these spots work far less well than the trailers, primarily because the shortened running time does the footage no favors.

A few weeks before release Fox engineered a massive “roadblock” strategy (Variety, 9/23/09) for the movie that put a two-minute clip of never-before-seen footage across most all TV networks, local stations, cable outlets and everywhere else during a block of prime-time programming, meaning you probably couldn’t escape it if you tried. The two-minute clip then teased the availability of an extended five-minute version that would be available afterward Comcast On Demand and Comcast’s Fancast.com streaming portal. (Disclosure: Voce, my employer, works with Comcast.net and I’m personally involved with that client. We did not, however, have any relationship with this promotion.)

Online advertising was also plentiful, mostly using the poster art, with some units incorporating the IHC alternate reality game as well.

Some of the poster art concepts also got repurposed as in-theater and other out-of-home ads.

Surprisingly I’m not seeing anything about any promotional partners.

Media and Publicity

The Institute for Human Continuity caused a lot of online chatter – especially on Twitter – as people found it and freaked out, only to have their friends then explain to them that it was all just part of a movie marketing campaign and the world wasn’t really ending in 2012, despite what the well-produced and slick-looking website was telling them. There were even some mainstream media stories like this one that dispelled the rumor that the IHC was real, which is some sort of testament to how good that site looked.

There was even some coverage of the campaign in the marketing press, with publications/sites like ClickZ writing up their reactions and recaps of the movie’s online campaign, ranging from the search engine components to the IHC “game” that was being played by the studio. And Brandfreak wrote up a piece about how Mayan elders were trying to shout into the wind about how 2012 isn’t actually when their calendar says the world will end, but their voice is pretty quite compared to a massive marketing campaign.

Countering the premise of the movie was also the subject of stories like this one in the LA Times (10/17/09) about how scientists were trying to calm the fears of an increasing number of people who were afraid they were going to be around for the end of the world and were having trouble dealing with that, including some people considering suicide to avoid that.

There was also considerable buzz to be gained by hooking up with “American Idol” runner-up Adam Lambert. The wannabe rock star contributed his first post-”Idol” song “Time for Miracles” to the soundtrack, with the song being teased on Moviefone and the subsequent video debuting initially on MySpace, part of that site’s attempt to become an entertainment portal.

There was even, as is the case with many similar movies, a cable TV special that dives into the premise of the film. These are barely-concealed marketing tactics and often come off as laughable and this looks to be no exception.

Put all together, the campaign became one of the most talked-about efforts (Los Angeles Times, 10/29/09) of mid-to-late 2009.

Overall

Well that’s quite a campaign, isn’t it?

Despite the impressive reach of the marketing – all those posters, all those websites, all those TV commercials – the campaign winds up feeling like the same sort of superficial spectacle the movie will likely be. It’s all glam that’s focused on the same five or six repeating images (USS Kennedy crashing into the White House, the Pacific sea board buckling into the ocean, etc) that convey the filmmaker’s and marketer’s hopes that seeing these moving images will be all the payoff the audience needs.

If you look back at the campaign for The Day After Tomorrow and use it as precedent, it’s unlikely that there’s anything substantive being held back from the audience in this marketing push. My guess is that after all the trailers, extended clips and other material we’ve now seen 98 percent of the movie’s major set-pieces. After all, what’s the use of hiding anything when the main thought process seems to be that you need those sequences to bring people in.

So from a marketing perspective you’d have to call the campaign a success. It’s unlikely to have been executed on the scale or with the tactics it was without a firm belief that it would appeal to the target audience, a group that is likely to be more impressed with spectacle than with substance anyway.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 11/14/09: I got interviewed a couple weeks ago about 2012′s marketing and what I thought of it, specifically about how it seemed to be getting so much attention for honking people off and causing more than a few folks to mistakenly think the world was ending. That interview resulted in a quick quote from me in The Guardian UK that, interestingly enough, is actually about the marketing for The Love Guru, but still in the context of campaigns that were more engaging than the films they were supporting.
• 11/16/09: That story also was used by Stephen Salto as the basis for a list of some movie marketing disasters that’s pretty funny.
• 11/16/09: Todd Defren of SHIFT Communications also pulled in a quote from my column in his post about social movie marketing that’s worth a read.
• 11/17/09: NASA was so inundated by requests for information on some of the movie’s supposed “facts” it setup a page simply for the purposes of debunking those items.

Movie Marketing Madness: The Men Who Stare at Goats

There’s always something the government doesn’t want you to know. It could be the existence of aliens. It could be who’s really influencing policy. It could a secret military project to develop a division of psychic warriors who go into battle armed with little but their power of their minds and the ability to influence the actions of their enemies.

The latter idea is the basis for The Men Who Stare at Goats. The movie stars Ewan McGregor as a journalist writing a story about this mysterious elite unit. In the course of research/investigation he comes across a former member of the division, played by George Clooney. Together they embark on a series of misadventures as Clooney recounts the history of the unit and tells of the various personalities that made it up.

This is actually one of three movies coming out in the next two months starring Clooney and, rightly or wrongly, is being viewed as the lesser of the bunch. Still, let’s take a look at how it’s being sold to the public.

The Posters

The first poster for the movie features, as you would expect from the title, a man and a goat. OK, it’s their silhouettes but that’s what they are. Behind the title treatment is a masonic symbol, making it clear to the audience that we’re in very odd territory here.

A second poster provides a clearer look at the cast but is no less surreal. This one has the primary cast; Clooney, Bridges, McGregor, Spacey and a goat, all looking heroically into the distance, chins held high. The same silhouettes of a man in a chair and a goat are used at the bottom of the image and the same Masonic eye and other symbols are used in the background of the cast’s faces. The entire rest of the poster is kind of water-marked with the images of goats around and about. It’s just as funny but obviously plays more to the audience by making sure to display all the movie stars that are in the movie and putting them there with utterly ridiculous looks on their faces.

Just before the movie was released – as in a matter of three or four days – a batch of character-centric posters were released. There’s not a whole lot to then design wise, though. Clooney, McGregor, Spacey and Bridges all get broken out into their own posters that have then staring into the face of a goat. They’re alright but don’t really add anything to the campaign, especially coming as they are this late in the timing.

The Trailers

We’re immediately introduced in the trailer to McGregor’s character, an investigative journalist who is tracking down the story of these psychic warriors the military is training. That leads him to Clooney’s character, who’s supposed to be the best of the best. He explains that he’s not just a psychic spy but a “Jedi warrior,” a line that I think made everyone on the internet guffaw more than a little considering who that is being delivered to. We then get introduced to the other members of this unit, Jeff Bridges’ hippie instructor, Kevin Spacey’s tactless officer and others. From there we get multiple scenes of just how not in-tune with their surroundings these “Jedi” are. The comedy plays maybe a bit more broadly than the movie probably is but that’s OK because it’s really funny.

Online

The official site opens with the core of the second poster’s art alongside the trailer, which auto-plays when the page loads.

“About the Film” is up first, with The Story, which gives a pretty decently written recap of the movie’s plot points and then a glorified credits block. That’s also where you’ll find Cast and Crew sections, with backgrounds and write-ups of the talent that went into making the movie.

The first trailer and about a half dozen extended clips are included in “Videos.” Most of those clips expand on what we’re first introduced to in the trailer and play pretty funny. There are about 10 stills in the “Photos” section.

The “Games” section is pretty funny in that the tests it presents you to see if you’re qualified to join the psychic division are completely ridiculous. They play it straight until the very end and get points for that.

There are a few Wallpapers and AIM Icons under “Downloads.”

“Fact or Fiction” is an interview with Jon Ronson, the author of the book the movie is based on. Ronson expounds on the origin of the book and how it’s actually a non-fiction narrative that’s been fictionalized for the movie. And on a related note, Simon & Schuster – the publisher of said book – is the only company listed under the “Partners” section.

There’s also a Facebook page and Twitter feed for the movie, both of which are supposed to be authored by a goat. That’s kind of funny, but there’s not very far you can go with it and unfortunately weighs the other online elements down a bit.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

There’s been a bit of both TV and online advertising done that I’ve seen. The TV spots were, as is often the case, condensed versions of the trailer, while the online units recreated the second poster’s art but in box or banner form.

Media and Publicity

The movie got a bit of buzz, not all of it great, around a debut at the Toronto Film Festival – one of two movies (Time, 9/13/09) Clooney was there to present and promote – a couple months before release. Nevertheless, with a lack of awareness prior to the trailer’s release just a couple weeks before that this was a much-needed shot in the arm. After that a series of clips were released that provided a deeper look at the movie.

Overall

I want to like this campaign but feel like it falls down on a couple of occasions. Specifically, it plays up the slapstick humor a bit too much for something that, unless I miss my guess, is more likely dry satire. When it gives in to that tendency it doesn’t come off as strong as when it plays it straight and lets the laughs come more naturally.

Unfortunately Clooney’s presence becomes the campaign’s key distraction. It’s obvious that he’s having fun with a ridiculous role, but the fact that he has two other movies coming out this fall – both of which have more buzz and momentum – means that the audience is probably thinking about them while watching this trailer.

It’s probably going to be attractive to fans of political satire but will, I’m guessing, have trouble attracting any sort of sizable audience.

What power do Twitter Lists have?

(Cross-posted on VoceNation)

As everyone likely knows, Twitter debuted native list-making functionality last week to the entire user-base after a brief period of selective beta testing. You won’t be notified that you now have the ability to make lists until you log in to Twitter on the web and see the message at the top of the page.

Creating a list is pretty easy. After punching the “Create a New List” button you can either search for a username or just go to either a specific user profile or your “Following” list and, from either of those, use the drop-down button to add a user to one of the lists you’ve created.

If you’d like to see what lists you yourself appear on just go to your logged-in home page and click the “Listed” link that appears below your picture and alongside your Following/Follower counts. That will show you what lists you’ve been added to and who the creator of those lists is. If you are viewing someone else’s list you can subscribe to updates from everyone on that list with a simple click of the “Follow This List” button at the top of said list.

After listening to some people complain that these lists are exclusionary and some people say it’s a great way to promote people you think are important, my opinion is that for personal usage they can be fun or informative but that their real power for marketing professionals comes in the promotion of employer or client programs.

Look at the Embedded Ambassador list created for a Voce program we’re working with Intel on. While other services let us create a similar list, this is now something that’s more “official” as well as being an easy way item to drop into any marketing materials that are created for the program. That link can be included in slide decks, is easily added to emails about program updates and is otherwise a great communication point. And it comes without the need to additionally explain that third-party service.

Lists will compete for our attention in the same way that Twitter already does, only more so. As some people were discussing last week, the number of lists you appear on will likely become the new Follower count – the way some people gauge popularity or influence.

Appearing on a list is certainly a good thing and does bring with it, in many cases, an important endorsement of your presence on Twitter. But as with everything it’s important that it be measured and weighed against program goals as a true gauge of influence and success. Without those benchmarks in place it’s tough – almost impossible – to determine whether what you’re doing on Twitter or anywhere else is working.