Movie Marketing Madness: Hot Tub Time Machine

One of my favorite sketches from “The Kids in the Hall” is one titled Premise Beach. With a band playing surf tunes, Kevin McDonald and Dave Foley scream an insane story idea – a man with a meat hand runs for office, a couple with gift-wrapped presents for heads are happy to survive Christmas – in a loud and enthusiastic way and the camera cuts away to show just how that premise would play out. It almost seems like a sketch created as a way to get a couple of absolutely whacked out ideas they come up with on the air despite knowing they weren’t strong enough for an actual sketch.

But sometimes one of those kind of ideas – the kind that come to you at 2:38 in the morning and which make you chuckle but which you know you probably shouldn’t tell anyone about for fear of, let’s face it, mob actions – actually get fleshed out enough to make it a whole TV episode or, perhaps, even a full-length movie.

The latest example of that is one of this week’s biggest releases, Hot Tub Time Machine. It’s one of those movies that also serves as a succinct plot description. What’s the name of the movie? Hot Tub Time Machine. What’s the movie about? A hot tub time machine.

Sure, there are more details but that’s the gist. More fully it’s about a group of friends who visit a ski resort they once frequented in their younger days and, after a wild night involving the titular hot tub, find themselves transported from 2010 back to 1986 as their younger selves and with a chance to relive those days or maybe do things a bit differently. Let’s take a look at how the campaign has sold a movie whose title says, quite literally, it all.

The Posters

The one poster takes the main cast and puts all four of them on each side of the one-sheet, one side showing how they appear in 2010 and one side showing how they look when they travel back to 1986. In-between the rows of pictures we’re shown just how they got into that predicament, with some alcohol, a squirrel and the titular hot tub positioned like a mathematical equation that results in those younger selves. At the bottom of the poster Chevy Chase is seen in his repairman’s outfit, lounging on a chair.

It’s not a hugely funny poster in and of itself, but it sells the premise fairly well, especially if you’ve seen the trailer and recognize the younger versions of the characters and can place just what Chase is doing there.

The Trailers

The first rumblings about the movie came with the release of a pseudo-trailer that was all about setting up the premise. It’s more a clip montage even though it’s structured like a trailer, but contains quite a bit of foul language and even more ridiculousness. In retrospect a lot of what’s here has been recycled into the rest of the campaign, even though this particular component seems to have been un-remembered in the official push.

The two all-access trailers (one’s 2:30 or so, one’s 1:30) both do a very decent job of setting up the movie’s plot and just laying out how much the movie wears its ridiculous premise on its sleeve proudly.

We’re introduced to the four central friends who have rented a house at a ski resort but, being mostly single and older, their nights seem to be filled with drinking alone. Then they stumble across the fact that their house has a time machine and things quickly get out of control. But when they wake up they find they’re surrounded by leg warmers, cassette players and horribly shiny hair products. Eventually they discover they’ve not only gone back in time, they’ve gone back in time and are once again their younger selves, at least all but the one that’s only 20 years old, and are reliving a trip they took there in 1986. That leads to all sorts of potential and potential problems as old romances are relived and new hook ups tried.

The trailers work incrementally better each time you watch them, probably because you’re able to move past the premise and stop feeling bad for Cusack a little bit more each time. Eventually you give in to the comedy and realize that the absolutely ridiculous title is just a hook it’s being hung on.

A red-band version spent a little more time on the setup, specifically one of the conversations leading to the guys arriving at the ski resort, and then gets really crude. F-bombs are dropped and breasts are exposed and it’s all quite funny, actually. What works about it is that there’s a nice mix of new scenes and ones that we’ve seen before, only expanded to include the raunchy dialogue and such.

What’s notable is just how little dialogue Cusack gets in any of the trailers. That tells me, and what scenes he is in and what few lines he is heard speaking seem to confirm this, that his role is as the straight man, the one who keeps his cool and who we’re supposed to be rooting for as the heart of the movie. Corddry and Robinson, by way of contrast, gets lots of punchlines so it seems they’re going to be the funny ones while Cusack is the good guy.

Online

After a hot tub thermometer counts down the official website’s loading status we get the same mathematical equation that is found on the poster, which in turn gives way to the content menu and the all-ages trailer, which starts playing automatically. Below that player are signs that let you watch the red-band trailer or find out how to demand a free screening in your areas. The ability to actually host a screening and invite a handful of friends is kind of a neat way to drum up some word of mouth for the movie, though most of the screenings are already over with.

When you mouse over the content menu at the bottom one of the cast’s heads pop up just as they appear on the poster.

“About” has a simple one-paragraph synopsis of the story (what more do you need?) that does a decent job of laying out the story, including some hints that there are actual emotional stakes involved.

There are only two stills in the “Photos” section and “Videos” just has the two trailers.

The “Games” section has a few things to pass the time, but be prepared to enter your age credentials to play. There’s Lou’s Whack-a-Douche, where you have to keep the headband wearing idiot away from the hottie, Nick’s Strip Quiz, where you have to answer questions correctly in order to coax the hottie out of her bathing suit and a Soundboard filled with audio clips from the movie.

At the bottom of the page are links to the MGM Studios Twitter profile, which has been pushing out links to some reviews and having fun trying to get #hottubtimemachine trending over the last few days. Part of that has been through the Twitagra (something that’s mentioned in the trailer) site, which prompted you to send a movie-related update with the promise of getting your follower count up through mentions by either the studio’s account or that of Rob Corddry as well as an 80′s outfit from Vans.

There’s also the Facebook Fan Page, which opens with another opportunity to watch the trailer or download the soundboard iPhone app. While the page has the usual photos and such it seems like the studio has turned the Wall over completely to the fans. I don’t see many official updates from the studio but a ton of conversations and comments from fans of the page.

Advertising and Cross Promotions

There was a whole lot of TV advertising done as well, including not only traditional TV spots – and some that were quite raunchy such as this one that primarily shows a woman writhing up and down apparently sans any clothes – but also with a targeted spot for the audience of “Jersey Shore” that tied the two together through their hot tub settings.

Quite a bit of online advertising was also done, most of which featured the same headshots that appear on the poster key art and which promised a look at the restricted trailer.

On that Facebook page is a link to a Tauntr Totally Necessary NCAA Tournament Bracket that’s about picking the hottest chicks that’s sponsored by the movie.

Media and Publicity

In addition to the general buzz about a movie with such a ludicrous title, much of the publicity, understandably, focused on the ’80s nostalgia the movie is all about embracing. That included multiple roundtables with the cast that quizzed them (New York Times, 3/19/10) about the major cultural milestones of that decade all under the pretense that this is interesting to the audience.

But let’s not discount that without word of mouth coming out about the movie on a regular basis – word of mouth that was intentionally generated by the studio through the use of very particular tactics, especially those that have centered around online platforms like Facebook and Twitter – much of the mainstream publicity would not have happened. In other words, if it weren’t for the studio getting the movie seen and people talking as a result of that, it’s doubtful many of the mainstream press outlets would have picked up on the movie as being anything other than a lark. That can’t go unremarked on and the studio’s efforts here should not be discounted or underestimated.

Overall

What can be said here? We’re on a level of craziness that rivals that of Snakes on a Plane. But unlike that movie there don’t seem to be the outsized expectations that the movie will the biggest thing ever because it’s generated some positive online buzz. I’m inclined to think that’s because the studio very deliberately did not open content generation up to be a free-for-all like the SoaP campaign did. So there isn’t the perception that people are going to turn out in droves because they have some sort of skin in the game.

The campaign itself kind of wears you down until you admit it’s funny, at least that’s what happened to me. I was initially of the mindset that this would come and go and not be a big thing and I had no interest in it, either in seeing it or writing up a review of the marketing campaign. But eventually, through sheer repetition, it broke through my wariness and I have to admit that this is a very funny and engaging campaign for a movie that probably has more than its share of laughs.

Most importantly, though, the campaign doesn’t pretend the movie is something that it’s not. The marketing is aware that this is bizonkers and doesn’t suffer any delusion about being a great work of art. So it has fun and plays it loose and sells the premise, which is all it needs to do.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 3/28/10: MGM partnered with check-in service Miso, which is focused on what you’re watching and not where you are but which is built on the Foursquare API, to create a special Hot Tub Time Machine badge people could get if they were seeing the movie.

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