Movie Marketing Madness: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

The Mission: Impossible franchise has probably at this point gone on longer than anyone originally involved could possible. What started out as a high-concept TV series has now become a film series that’s already spawned three movies that have achieved success of varying levels under the directorship of a variety of helmers. 1996’s debut film came from director Brian DePalma and was more of a drama than a straight action flick. The second entry went in the other direction with action icon John Woo behind the camera. Number 3 in 2006 had J.J. Abrams, then mostly known for his TV work at the helm. But all three starred Tom Cruise (in what’s oddly the only franchise of his career) in the role of Ethan Hunt, the top field operative in the Impossible Mission force.

Now Cruise is back with another director calling the shots, Pixar veteran Brad Bird. Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol takes Cruise as Hunt back to the role of rogue agent. After a mission in Moscow goes pear-shaped as, oddly, the Kremlin explodes in his wake. Disavowed (again) by the U.S. government he’s intent on clearing his reputation and that of his team. So he takes tech guru Benji (Simon Pegg) along with Jane (Paula Patton) and the enigmatic Brandt (Jeremy Renner) on a mission to find out who’s behind the conspiracy he finds himself and the others caught up in.

The Posters

The first teaser poster for the movie was actually a repurposing of a previously-released publicity shot, with Cruise staring at the camera with a hood drawn over his head. Random numbers appear like some sort of code around him and the familiar M:I fuse that’s burning down appears at the bottom.

The second one-sheet was one designed specifically to sell IMAX presentations. It also reused an earlier-released publicity shot, though this one was significantly more spectacular, showing Cruise in the middle of the tower-climbing sequence that was highlighted in the first trailer. It certainly sells the big scale of the movie – at least parts of it – and that makes sense for this IMAX-specific pitch.

A third poster finally got the rest of the cast some recognition as they flanked Cruise – who was still wearing his Zartan hoodie – in walking toward the camera as sparks flew around them and the whole area was apparently in the middle of sandstorm.

Next up was a series of character banners for each of the four main characters, with a different phrase for each one.

A fourth poster was specifically meant to promote the IMAX release of the film and nicely worked the image of the Dubai tower into the lit fuse that’s so associated with the M:I franchise.

The Trailers

The first trailer opens with dire intonations about the Kremlin being bombed and warnings that the incident is going to be blamed on the members of the IMF team, who will be made into scapegoats. So their mission is to find the people who are really behind the attack and clear their own names. That’s about all the exposition we get as the trailer then transitions into shot after quick shot of very beautiful people infiltrating parties, kicking other not-quite as beautiful people and, of course, a glimpse of the movie’s key action sequence with Cruise scaling a glass tower. It’s not bad but it looks pretty generic at this point.

The next trailer, which on Yahoo started with an introduction from Bird, throws us into the middle of a mission by our crack team that goes very wrong when the Kremlin blows up and the team gets disavowed. But then the team is really on their own when their boss gets killed, meaning this mission is very personal to the remaining team members. There’s some humor, there’s lots of action and more as we see how everything plays out, including the possibility that one of the members might not be playing straight with everyone else. It ends with more of the building-scaling sequence that we’ve seen elsewhere and which is obviously the focal point of the campaign.

Online

There’s a lot thrown at you when you first hit the movie’s official website. The main element is a recreation of the final poster key art but over on the right there are a bunch of small video windows that rotate through scenes from the trailer. Then just to the side of that there’s a series of prompts to play a game on Facebook, see it in IMAX and more. There’s also a Partners box that opens up, when you click on it, some invitations to find out more about the companies that were promotional partners on the film.

Over on the right is the main content menu, where the first option is “Videos.” There you’ll find both trailers, a couple of Featurettes, some TV spots and a handful of extended clips from the movie.

By my count there are about 16 stills in the “Gallery.” “About the Film” has a decent synopsis of the movie’s story.

“Cast and Crew” has career information on the stars of the movie and those who made it happen behind the camera. Finally “Downloads” has collections of Wallpapers and Buddy Icons for you to grab if you like.

The movie’s Facebook page has videos and photos along with publicity and marketing updates, many of which can also be found on the Twitter profile that’s specific to the film.

That Twitter handle was one of the first ones to get access to new tools on Twitter that allowed brand managers to keep an update at the top of the stream, in this case an update containing the movie’s trailer.

The studio also ran an effort on Twitter and Facebook that promised fans that with people using the #mission hashtag at a sufficient volume they could unlock an exciting new clip from the film.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

TV spots like this one started running that promised the audience a rip-roaring good time. There’s lots of action sequences and lots of humor. We get the basic outline of the story – that a mission has gone so sideways that the entire IMF team has been disavowed and must now seek out the truth behind what happened – conveyed mostly through big explosions and more.

BMW signed on as a cross-promotional partner with co-branded ads running to play up the carmaker’s inclusion in the movie. Toshiba and Coke Zero were also promotional partners though their programs didn’t get quite as much press as BMW’s and less information was available on what exactly they were doing.

30- and 60-second spots were run with the NHL, another promotional partner, where it was also the leading sponsor of some special events by the league.

Media and Publicity

After all the news of casting and who would direct the movie had died down and production begun the first real bit of press came when the movie’s full title, a departure from the numeric structure of the previous sequels, was announced (Los Angeles Times, 10/28/10) though not everyone was a fan. At the press conference where that news broke Cruise said no numbers was always his goal but I’m guessing it had more to do with the overall trend of subtitled sequels that feel more like chapter installments than anything else.

It would be a little while before more press activity picked up, with marketing filling in the gap. But when it did it was in the form of interviews with Bird (LAT, 11/4/11) on how he wanted to go back to some of the spirit that the first movie had with this new entry and get some more inspired performances out of the cast.

Some decent press was generated around activities on Facebook, specifically the launch of a game there (THR, 11/21/11) that was meant to appeal to those who were no longer tied to video game consoles and the studio’s decision to make the previous three films available to rent on Facebook to appeal to those who were looking to no longer be tied to traditional rental outlets.

Brad Bird’s involvement as director generated a lot of news stories as they focused on this being a departure for the guy (NYT, 12/11/11) who usually helmed Pixar-created family friendly fare. Other stories, though, drew the line between those movies and this one in terms of Bird’s flair for visual storytelling (Wired, Dec. 2012)

When the movie opened in IMAX a week before it did in regular theaters audiences were treated to a “prologue” of footage from 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises, a promise that had some wondering of the film’s opening weekend would have a “Batman bump” (LAT, 12/19/11) from people who bought a ticket for the movie for the sole reason of seeing the Batman preview, something that would be noticable in the second week.

I’m sure the cast and crew also made sufficient rounds to the talk show circuit in the weeks before release as well.

Overall

It’s a pretty good campaign that, like the push for the last movie and even (if my memory is accurate) the one before that has zero interest in making sure the audience remembers the first one. There’s no winking at the previous installments or anything like that in the marketing that requires people to know what happened before, which is the case wiht the movies themselves in addition to the campaigns.

Everything works pretty well here. It’s nice to see Simon Pegg back in the same role from the third movie since he’s always welcome on screen. The trailers certainly make it out to be a big action movie and I like the way there’s a consistant touchpoint in the form of the sequence around the big tower break-in. That lets everyone know exactly what the movie has to offer in a clear way, marking this film as some holiday-season escapism.

Movie Marketing Madness: Tower Heist

The last several years have left more than a few folks feeling like they’ve been willing participants in their own robberies. Money that we were assured would be available to us dried up and disappeared because of the greed and subsequent shady dealings of certain individuals who are in the financial system. Not that things need to be no more complex than the dimmest person can understand but some of the ways that money was moved around – and eventually lost – are confusing even to the most logical of laymen.

The new movie Tower Heist is about a group who decides to do what many of us have wanted to do: Get even with those who lost our money. The residents and employees of a high-end apartment building, including Josh (Ben Stiller), Fitzhugh (Matthew Broderick) and Charlie (Casey Affleck) among others all trusted a wealthy resident (Alan Alda) with substantial amounts of their money But one day they find he’s embezzled it and it’s all gone. So they enlist Slide (Eddie Murphy), a thief who once hit the building, to help them steal their money back. Wackiness, of course, ensues.

The Posters

The movie’s first poster is primarily concerned with selling the movie as an ensemble film. So Stiller, Murphy, Broderick and the rest of the crew are shown leaning against a building and looking very cocky. The copy “It’s not a robbery, it’s payback” does a decent job of setting up the story without actually telling the audience very much. But honestly the campaign is probably designed just to convince people that they should just sit back and not worry about plot holes because the cast is so charming. So the lack of any story points here beyond what are obvious is likely by design and not something that’s keeping anyone up at night.

The second one-sheet cut out everyone aside from Stiller and Murphy and, oddly, took out any and all copy aside from their names and the rest of the credits. The idea here, obviously, is that the audience should be attracted to the film by the presence of these two stars and little else. No plot description is necessary apparently and the fact that these two are in the film should in and of itself be enough to fill seats.

The Trailers

The first trailer is all about laying out the basic premise of the movie’s story. We meet the gang that works at a posh New York City high rise apartment and one of its residents, a high-profile Wall Street type. Everything is going fine until he’s arrested for fraud and the workers in the building find out the pensions he’s been managing for them are now completely gone. Stiller and a few others determine to get what they can back, though, and set out to steal whatever cash that might be laying around in order to exact some revenge and get their losses back. Being novices, though, the need and expert and so recruit Murphy’s character, a professional thief. But of course things don’t go very smoothly and lots of wackiness ensues as they run into all sorts of problems.

The trailer shows that the movie hits all the notes you’d expect such a story to but the most surprising thing about is that Eddie Murphy actually looks like he’s legitimately funny. That’s something that hasn’t happened in 10+ years and, honestly, his interplay with Stiller looks like it might be worth checking out in and of itself. It reminds me of some of Murphy’s best work in the 80’s and hopefully marks a return to form for him.

Unfortunately not everyone was thrilled with the trailer, as actor Greg Grunberg reacted very badly to the line about Stiller’s character being a “seizure boy.” That outrage was the result of Grunberg having an epileptic son, something that’s sure to change your perspective on things.

A second trailer hit many of the same notes though slightly rearranged. We still get the setup that Alda’s banker has lost money from all of the employees of the building he lives in and that a select few are determined to rob form him to get it back. We get a few different scenes, particularly of Murphy teaching the group how to be criminals but that’s about it that separates it from the first one.

Online

The official website loads and the first thing I notice (aside from the recreation of the poster key art that makes up the primary image) is how devoted to social sharing the top of the site is. There’s a scroll of updates from people on Twitter who have used the hashtag #towerheist or who have otherwise mentioned the movie. It’s a curated feed, of course.

Outside of that the front page allows you to get some ringtones, download a song from iTunes from the movie’s soundtrack and play the “Heist it Back” game that is mentioned more below. There’s also prompts to check in on GetGlue to unlock character stickers and more and an invitation to play an 8-bit game version of the movie.

Moving beyond all that end Entering the Site the first thing there are images of the main characters that, when you mouse over them, give you a one-sentence description of the character and their motivations.

Accessing the Menu, which is arranged like the schematics of a building, the first section is “Video” and there you’ll find just the two Trailers. “Downloads” has some Wallpapers, Buddy Icons and Ringtones.

Hitting “The Film” section you’ll be able to read a halfway decent Story synopsis but the Cast and Crew information along with the Production Notes are all only available as PDF downloads. That’s odd for Cast/Crew.

The “Gallery” has just five stills from the movie, though the way they’re arranged in a nice endless scroll gives the initial impression that there are many more.

Finally the “Features” just has links to play the same games that are listed on the front page.

The movie’s Facebook page ports over or links to a lot of the games and other features from the official site and, of course, hosts the games that use Facebook as part of their mechanisms. There are also lots of videos – including tons of 30-second TV commercials – and photos along with the regular updates on press and marketing activities. There was also a Twitter profile that contained many of those updates.

There was a kind of cool online scavenger hunt run, with clues hidden across Facebook that, when found, gave people Facebook Credits that could be used for playing the “Heist it Back” game that brought them into the movie’s story and allowed them to interact with characters.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

TV spots began running in late September that certainly sold the movie as an ensemble comedy, setting up the basic plot of a group of people working together to exact a pound of flesh from the corrupt finance guy who stole from all of them and lost their money. A whole bunch of spots were eventually produced though they all, for the most part, hit the same three or four notes though in different ways and in different orders.

Outdoor advertising was done as well, with posters that sold the movie primarily as a Stiller/Murphy partnership, which is hardly surprising.

Media and Publicity

There was a lot of publicity for the film when Ratner, the director here, announced that he had chosen Murphy to host the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony (Hollywood Reporter, 9/6/11), which he was also directing.

Other than that the biggest news around the movie came when it was announced Universal would make it available for video on demand just three weeks after its initial theatrical release (Los Angeles Times, 10/5/11) for $60, though only in a couple markets and only through Comcast. That led to as much outrage from theater owners as it did interest from the press and industry pundits, who will then be watching closely whether its promised availability has an impact in those markets on box-office receipts.

Cinemark and other theater chains later announced they would refuse to book the movie (LAT, 10/10/11), saying they wouldn’t support the studio’s plan to go VOD so soon, something that ultimately led Universal to back down and cancel the experiment (THR, 10/12/11).

Overall

There’s a lot I like about this campaign. As I said before it’s single biggest accomplishment may be that I’m somewhat interested in a new movie starring Eddie Murphy, something that hasn’t happened for upwards of 15 years or so. Aside from that this is selling a movie that appears to be entertaining and light weight for the most part, something that’s professionally put together and, unlike many of Brett Ratner’s movies, may not make me actively want to jam a pointed stick into my thorax. Which is a win, really.

More than that the movie is arriving at the time of the Occupy Wall Street movement that’s gripping the nation. I’m sure the studio has at least flirted with the idea of tying this in with that more overtly through the press but the fact that hasn’t happened tells me the idea was rejected. But the coincidental timing may still wind up benefiting the film as people look to it as a fictionalization of the rage they feel and enjoy seeing a group of people act out the kind of personal revenge they’d like to see exacted themselves.

Movie Marketing Madness: The Rum Diary

There are very few people who have done more to change the tone of and style of not just journalistic writing but also the ways many other forms of writing were done than Hunter S. Thompson. Instead of remote detachment it was suddenly trendy – and would continue to become more and more accepted – for the writer to insert himself or herself into the story, providing the reader with a first person account and perspective of the subject matter being covered. It’s tempting to call Thompson the first blogger since that sort of “world through my own eyes” style would become the go-to approach for online journals but I’m not going to do that since it’s not exactly accurate.

So it’s kind of appropriate that when his books get made into movies there’s no attempt to do anything but find a Thompson surrogate to fill the character of the writer. The latest example of this is The Rum Diary. In this story that character, Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp, a friend of the writer who also played him in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas), is sent to San Juan some time in the 1950’s. There he seeks to ingratiate himself in the local culture while at the same time investigating the possibly illegal activities of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart), an American who’s more than a little shady. And that’s also while becoming involved with Sanderson’s girlfriend Chenault (Amber Heard).

The Posters

The movie’s first poster certainly sets up the story. The film’s title is spelled out using empty liquor bottles and the equation for the story is laid out as being “One part outrage, one part justice, three parts rum.” That plus Depp’s name is all that’s seen here (I’m surprised he’s not actually seen on the poster) but this is officially labeled as a teaser for now.

The second poster just has Depp looking kind of sideways toward the camera, a hat cocked on his head and the copy “Absolutely nothing in moderation” toward the bottom. Another poster has the same copy but with a shot of Depp staring out the window of a hotel room that’s obviously been the scene of some major debauchery the previous night.

The Trailers

The trailer starts out by introducing us to the Thompson character played by Depp and his introduction to life in Rio, which is filled with lots of drinking and lots of strange characters. Then we meet the girlfriend of a powerful American who he begins to investigate. We finally see Depp get a little earnest as he declares he’s going to go after that guy for illegal activities, something that also lets him get closer to the girl.

It’s basically about selling the movie as another eccentric performance by Depp in an exotic location and with lots of crazy folks around him. It looks pretty good, like there might be more to it than just lots of zaniness by Depp, like there might be a decent story that performance is hung on.

Online

The setup of the movie’s official website is one of the more unique I’ve seen recently.

First off at the bottom there are some of the main content sections. While there are links at the bottom of the page that will take you to the various sections you can also scroll left to right to find them in a different way.

“About the Film” takes you to the section with a Synopsis of the story as well as a Cast/Crew credits. There are just shy of two dozen stills in the “Photo Gallery” and “Videos” has the official Trailer as well as four extended clips from the film. Desktop Wallpapers are also scattered around the site for you to download if you so choose.

There’s also some information that can help you appreciate the film’s a little more. There are sections for “San Juan, P.R.” and “Hunter S. Thompson” that give you some background on both the movie’s setting and the gonzo journalist that wrote the book on which it’s based.

The film’s Facebook page has lots of photos, videos and updates on the marketing and promotion for the movie, including an emphasis on getting you to enter a contest giving away a trip to San Juan.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

A TV spot or two was aired, some of which were surprisingly strong on plot and basically played like slightly trimmed down versions of the trailer, showing much of the same footage and nothing new. If anything things that emphasized Depp’s antics were what was cut as the approach here was to sell it as a straight, if slightly funny drama.

Media and Publicity

Despite the fact that the movie finished shooting in 2009 it wasn’t until March of 2011 that news broke it had finally been picked up for distribution by FilmDistrict (Los Angeles Times, 3/29/11), a new distribution house that was just getting off the ground.

There was also a profile of Depp (Vanity Fair, Nov. 11) that talked about his affection for Thompson but which gained a lot of attention for comments made about the Pirates of the Caribbean franchise more than anything.

Overall

There’s some good stuff here. The emphasis, of course, is on promising the audience that they’re in for a crazy, whacked out Depp performance that this time is geared more for adults than the kids the POTC franchise appeals to. It might go a little hard into that particular paint, though, and overplay just how kooky and psychedelic the movie really is, though, in that effort. But it’s still a nice collection of elements even if it doesn’t really add up to a cohesive and whole branding effort. There’s just too much going on here, likely the result of the studio trying out different approaches that it never quite comes together.

Movie Marketing Madness: 30 Minutes or Less

How we react and behave in high pressure situations defines us to a great extent. There are varying degrees of what can be considered “high pressure” that range from periods of great stress that last months or even years to just a few moments that carry high stakes for ourselves and those around us. It’s whether we have the steely resolve to get through those situations that can decide whether we come out the other side a better person or if we come out of them at all.

The new movie 30 Minutes or Less is about just such a situation. Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is a slacker pizza delivery dude with an ordinary life that he is blissfully happy with because it entails almost no responsibility. One day he’s kidnapped by a couple of hicks (Danny McBride and Nick Swardson) and told he needs to rob a bank or the bomb they’ve strapped to his chest will go off. Panicking, Nick enlists his friend Chet (Aziz Ansari) to help him carry out the robbery.

The movie, while not based directly on these events, is loosely similar to the real story of a man who was blackmailed into robbing a bank for another party with a bomb strapped to his chest. But the real story has a much more tragic ending as the guy died when the blackmailers detonated the bomb.

The Posters

A pair of posters were the first ones released here, with one side showing Eisenberg and Aziz in their ski masks and the other side showing a couple of nameless and faceless guys wearing gorilla masks like they do in the first trailer. It’s alright but it’s going to come off as a little confusing, I think, for anyone who hasn’t already see that trailer since the two leads aren’t recognizable unless you know it’s them and there’s no context for the guys in gorilla masks.

The later theatrical poster wasn’t exactly what you’d call inspired. It simply shows Eisenberg and Aziz looking a little shell-shocked and nervous in front while McBride and Swardson are in the back clearly in control of the situation and looking quite cocky. It’s not the most artistic design in the world but it shows off who’s in the movie and that’s the major hook here so it’s hard to fault them based on pure practicality.

The Trailers

The first trailer, a red-band edition, starts out by introducing us to the two friends who are having a moment of falling out due to one’s actions with the other’s sister. When Nick goes later on to deliver the pizza he’s tasked with he finds himself set upon by two guys in gorilla masks who are intent not to let him go. When he is released it’s with a bomb strapped to his chest and the mandate to go rob a bank. So he goes to enlist Chet’s help and the two set about trying to execute on that plan. Of course hijinks and wackiness ensue since they’re not professional bank robbers and they’re not really getting along at the moment.

It’s a pretty funny trailer because the red-band freedoms are just used for language purposes and not to show off every crude or semi-crude moment that the movie contains. There’s still the bullet points of a story conveyed here. And as funny as Aziz is, Eisenberg actually might be funnier because he isn’t asked to do quite as much mugging to the camera.

Shortly thereafter a green-band version was released that was essentially the same trailer only with the language and other objectionable bits.

The next trailer went back to red-band land so all sorts of foul language was thrown back in. This time, though, the trailer focused much more on the overall plot and not just on selling the movie as some sort of slacker comedy. We see how the plot to have a pizza delivery driver rob the bank is hatched by the two redneck idiots and some of how they factor into the rest of the movie as well, a much larger perceived role than had been previously shown. There’s still plenty of antics from the two friends who are forced into the heist and, as I said, more of the story itself is shown so this is a good (for all intents and purposes) second entry into the trailer category.

It should be noted that the trailer ends not by promoting the movie’s official website or Facebook page or anything but instead a Twitter hashtag – #dontblowit that people should presumably use when discussing the movie. That’s interesting and all and certainly makes it clear what level of audience is being targeted by the studio, though you have to remember that anyone who uses unnecessary hashtags is ultimately going to “the special hell” reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater.

Again, an all-ages version of this trailer was released shortly after the restricted one that showed many of the same scenes and jokes, only with the most offensive bits removed.

Online

The official website loads with a list of options to choose from right off the bat. You can watch one of the Trailers, play a game or check out a couple of the movie’s social networking profiles.

The site’s navigation is laid out as if it’s a neighborhood map and when you mouse-over each area you see a location from the film and are prompted to share your visit there with your Facebook friends, something that’s so granular it’s hard to really comprehend.

The first section is “About the Film” and has a Synopsis as well as Cast and Filmmakers sections, though those just have a picture of each actor in the Cast area and just a list of those who worked on making it in the Filmmakers area. So it’s not exactly overflowing with content.

There’s just the one Trailer in the “Trailers” section, not even links to the restricted ones or any mention of them. “Downloads” has Wallpapers, Twitter Skins and Buddy Icons that echo the first poster key art. Finally the “Photo Gallery” has just 10 stills from the film with a couple behind the scenes shots mixed in.

The movie’s Facebook page has lots of updates with clips and promotional videos from the movie as well as additions to the official site and more. There’s also photos and an emphasis on asking people to pick their favorite quotes from the trailers. The Twitter feed has similar updates as well as information about some out-of-home promotions that were run in the weeks leading up to release. There was also a Tumblr blog setup that contains some video clips and lots of GIFs of scenes from the trailers that either the studio has created or which have been reblogged from others.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

There was an innovative promotion with check-in service Foursquare that awarded movie-themed badges when people checked in at places like pizza shops and banks among others. Once someone earned the badge they were open to getting promos from local movie theaters and were entered into sweepstakes awarding a $3,000 prize.

Some TV spots were created that obviously played down the raunch and language in the movie but which still conveyed the extreme circumstances that are in the story but which are played comically. The emphasis here is still on all four of the primary cast members, especially Eisenberg and McBride.

Media and Publicity

One of the first publicity plays for the movie would be during the hipster-teen targeting MTV Movie Awards this year. There a new clip from the movie was shown to the TV audience in an attempt to get the young audience for that show interested.

Then came news the movie would be screening at 2011 Comic-Con since apparently it was felt the geek crowd there would overlap significantly with the people likely to find this sort of slacker comedy funny.

The fact that there are similarities between the movie’s story and a similar real life incident resulted in stories (AP, 8/7/11) about how the family of the victim in that case weren’t interested at all in the movie and naturally found it distasteful.

Overall

The trailers are, in my opinion, the strongest component of this particular campaign. That’s because they most clearly show the kind of movie that’s being sold, with the other components coming up short in various areas. The posters aren’t really able to convey anything beyond the presence of the certain actors that the audience might find amusing to watch. And the website, very surprisingly, doesn’t include anything about the age-restricted material that’s part of the campaign. I’m really shocked by that since there’s not even a mention of it outside of one prompt on the very front page, which sends people over to Facebook.

It’s obviously selling the movie to the same crowd that came out for movies like Pineapple Express but I’m not sure there’s enough of an emphasis on certain components of the story to fully appeal to that audience. It’s a decent enough campaign but it kind of comes off as a middling effort that doesn’t quite commit to one extreme to the other and I wonder how that’s going to come off to various parts of the moviegoing public.

Movie Marketing Madness: Captain America

Very few comic book characters have reached “icon” status. Sure there are some that are well-known and the past few years have proven that even those who hover just below the A-List can become popular among audiences who aren’t constantly evaluating whether or not X title still belongs on their pull list or if a series of creative misfires have made rendered it no longer worth regularly reading.

While he’s never been as instantly and universally popular as his Marvel Universe cohorts Spider-Man and The Hulk, Captain America is certainly an icon of the comics world. Created during the Second World War as a Nazi-smashing figure of the American fighting spirit and then revived during the 60’s as a central component of Marvel’s burgeoning character line-up, Cap has since been a character that not everyone might be completely schooled on but they are certainly aware of.

Now he’s taking his place in the cinematic version of the Marvel Universe in the new movie Captain America: The First Avenger. The movie, unlike the other films Marvel Studios has produced recently, is a period piece that rightly places Cap – first just scrawny Steve Rogers (Chris Evans) – in the 1940’s. Desperate to do his part for the war but constantly turned away because he’s so undersized, Rogers is eventually recruited into a super-secret program to turn soldiers into the perfect fighting machine. But when Hydra, the science division of the Nazi army, destroys the formula and the process right after Rogers goes through it he’s left as the only one. It’s up to him, then to take down the Hydra’s leader The Red Skull (Hugo Weaving) and save the world.

There have been allusions and references to Cap in just about all the previous movies from Marvel (I don’t know about Thor since I haven’t seen it), including glimpses of his shield in both Iron Man movies and the prominent role the Super Soldier program played in The Incredible Hulk. But Marvel is clearly setting the table for next year’s The Avengers and the role Cap will play in it with this movie’s subtitle.

The Posters

The first poster, which debuted just days before the first TV spot ran during the Super Bowl, presented a gritty portrait of the character. Cap is standing there in the middle of the design with his head bowed and holding his shield in a moment of serious contemplation.

Across his chest is the word “Avenge,” a clear allusion to his future inclusion in the super team of that name. Dirt flies all around him as if in battle, which ties in nicely to the filmmaker’s desire to make this a war picture as much as a super hero movie.

The image is pretty similar to one originally appearing on the cover of Captain America #4 from 2005 and so is clearly meant to appeal to the comics readers in the audience.

Nowhere to be seen on this first teaser is the subtitle “The First Avenger,” though the “Avenge” here does foreshadow that. Presumably that will appear later in the campaign but on this one it’s not just downplayed but non-existent.

There was a promotional poster that was created for the crew of the movie and featured a 40’s-era type of design aesthetic. It was kind of so awesome that I almost don’t want to say too much about it for fear of getting in to a neverending rant on why this kind of cool design concept can’t be used for the actual movie marketing efforts instead of being consigned to this sort of behind the scenes promotion.

The second official poster gave us a better look at Evans as Cap. He’s right up in front of the camera looking off to the side as if evaluating some new threat, his shield taking up most of the lower half of the image space. Evans still isn’t sporting the cowl here, which makes me think that there’s something telling the studio that putting him in that mask is turning people off in some manner. There’s no other reason not to have Captain America fully decked out on the posters for the movie. Aside from that, though, this is still quite good and continues the gritty look of the first one but in more of an action sequence than before.

A final theatrical poster was released just a week before release that brought the whole cast into the picture. Cap stands there (still sans cowl) while Peggy Carter, Col. Phillips, the Howling Commandos and Bucky Barnes are arrayed around him as the Red Skull scowls in the background and explosions fly around everyone. It’s very much a traditional type of super hero one-sheet and indeed is remarkably similar to posters for other heroes like Iron Man and more but gosh darnit if it doesn’t work. It’s also nice to see the poster campaign finally catch up to the rest of the marketing in highlighting the rest of the cast, something that’s been a constant theme of the trailers and TV spots while the posters have just been focused on Cap.

The Trailers

The first full length trailer is kind of fantastic. We meet Steve Rogers as a scrawny, undersized would-be volunteer in the army who’s rejected over and over again. As we see his hard-scrabble life as the kid who’s always picked on (including getting into a fight where he grabs a garbage can cover for protection) we also hear the exposition from Jones’ officer talking about a new “super soldier” program. The footage then shifts to Rogers being put into the capsule that facilitates his transformation into the perfect soldier, including a brief shot of Howard Stark.

Finally we begin to see Captain America in action, barging into Nazi/Hydra outposts (with the Howling Commandos, which is all kinds of awesome in and of itself) and throwing his shield at the bad guys. We get a similar shot of the Red Skull as we saw in the earlier Super Bowl spot and plenty of action, especially in the last half of the trailer.

This trailer is very, very cool. it shows the look and feel of the movie (including the computer-assisted shrinking of Chris Evans) as being something that seems akin to Johnston’s The Rocketeer while also having the action ramped up a bit. It also pulls off the tricky task of selling the movie as being a pretty good straight action flick while also selling it as a fantastic comics adaptation with lots of tips to the mythology of the character. Just great stuff.

The second trailer starts with the setup as we meet Steve Rogers and see what kind of character he has as well as how he’s finally accepted in to the Army. There’s a key scene on this front where Jones’ character throws a dummy grenade in a group of recruits and Rogers jumps on it to try and save the others, a moment that tips the scales in terms of his being selected for the Super Soldier program. We then see his transformation, which is followed by Hydra destroying Erskine’s lab.

Then the action shifts into high gear as Cap starts taking the fight to Hydra and their Nazis, taking down their bases and hitting lots of them with his shield. We finally, at least in this part of the campaign, get to hear the Red Skull speak as he confronts Cap about what makes him so special, to which he replies “Nothing…I’m just a kid from Brooklyn,” a line that bookends the trailer nicely and brings it back to his humble beginnings.

If anything the trailer works even better than the first, showing a more complete and more linear story arc and really selling the all out action of the film while still very much making it a character-driven story. There are a few bad jokes in there but that’s alright.

Online

When the official website first loads you get one of those “site lite” sort of deals. You’re prompted to watch the Trailer and view a Story synopsis. The Video section here has both trailers as well as the Super Bowl commercial and finally there’s a bit over a dozen stills in the Images section.

Finally Entering the Site things load like the beginning of a filmstrip showing some sort of military program.

The first section there is “About the Film” and there you’ll find a short Synopsis of the movie’s story as well as Cast and Filmmaker bios and Production Notes – at least those sections are listed there despite the fact that each one is currently (less than a week from release) still tagged as “Coming Soon.”

The same 14 images that were on the front page are here in the “Gallery” and the “Videos” section also just has the same three videos. “Downloads” then just has Wallpapers and Buddy Icons.

The “Experience” (which is also universally accessible via the “Dossiers” navigation on the right) has information on all the major characters and organizations in the movie, ranging from Cap himself to Hydra to the Howling Commandos.

The movie’s Facebook page has updates on publicity, promotions and marketing as well as video and photos and more.

Those watching the trailer online and then later seeing the movie could check-in to GetGlue and earn exclusive stickers. There was also an iPhone/iPad app that featured a 24-level game where Cap had to kick the hinders of Hydra agents and other baddies.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

Marvel, as they’ve done with other films of theirs, created multiple lists of essential readings and other comic promotions to take advantage of how the character is (hopefully) at the top of people’s minds. There was also, as many had been predicting, a relaunch of the main Captain America title that included not only a new #1 but also the new #1 that featured the return of Steve Rogers to the shield, thereby not confusing all those new potential readers with a Cap who’s not Rogers.

The comic tie-ins also included a prequel digital book that was set in the world of the movie and filled in some of the story elements from the film, giving readers a sneak peak into that story.

There was, of course, a video game that’s being released around the same time as the movie that doesn’t necessarily share a plot or tie directly in to the film but, again, is part of the overall spotlighting of the character that’s being done across all platforms.

The first look at any actual footage from the film came when Paramount ran a 30 second commercial for it during Super Bowl XLV. It starts off by showing us skinny, scrawny Steve Rogers (what appears to be a heavily computer-modified Evans) who is then placed into a chamber and emerges a moment later much taller and much stronger. We then see him in full uniform and with his shield leading troops into battle, swinging through an enemy stronghold and more. It ends with a bit of humor as Peggy Carter proves that the shield works in a very effective way. The spot includes mention of this being our introduction to the first Avenger and, most importantly, shows that the costume looks pretty darn cool on screen and in motion, which was my and others biggest fear.

Further TV commercials would play up the transformation of Steve Rogers from a frail weakling who’s beat up in city alleyways into the super soldier who takes on the bad guys single-handedly, with some showing the transformation sequence and other just hinting at it while showing lots of footage of Cap throwing his shield at various things and otherwise plowing through the enemy ranks. More commercials would feature more character moments and even feature the first look at on-screen dialogue from the Red Skull and more.

Some TV spots such as this one would include footage of Cap being found in the modern day, frozen in a block of ice, something I didn’t think was going to make it into the movie. That’s a pretty big reveal of a pretty major part of the movie and I’m more than a little surprised it’s shown so prominently here. I had kind of assumed that if this

Out-of-home standees were placed in theaters that reproduced the movie’s key poster art.

Despite the period setting of the film there was some activity on the cross-promotion front as well.

Norton security software was on board, not only with product promotions but also with a video they produced called “Behind the Shield” that featured interviews with Evans, Johnston and some of the Marvel creators and executives talking about the character and its history, focusing of course on the creation of the shield for the movie. That video premiered on Norton’s Facebook page and required people to Like the page to view it, though how Norton thought they would convert comic/movie fans to customers I’m not sure.

Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins engaged in some retail promotions of their own, with star-shaped donuts being available at the former along with red, white and blue Coolata drinks and the latter offering lots of new tri-colored and movie-themed ice cream treats. There was also an “Unlock the Lab” feature on the Dunkin’ website that featured exclusive movie content and chances to win prizes ranging from a trip to the premiere to movie soundtracks and other swag.

Media and Publicity

While people had obviously been talking about this movie for a while – mainly about casting and costume design but also speculating as to tone and story – the reality started to kick in around Comic-Con 2010. Not only was Evans in attendance there but just prior to the convention a very cool and artistic piece of concept art was released that showed the character in battle in WWII. Also in attendance at Comic-Con was Cap’s shield from the movie, giving everyone their first real-life look at the prop and serving to get people excited when combined with the brief bit of footage that was shown as part of the movie’s panel presentation.

Also right around the time of Comic-Con director Johnston made it clear that the story was about one man’s character and his quest to remain a good person as opposed to be a “flag-waver” (Los Angeles Times, 7/21/10) who was unquestioningly patriotic but was still a guardian of America and her people. While some people read a lot in to this, it’s clear Johnston is simply saying they had to come up with a definition of the character that would fit in the movie, which doesn’t have the luxury of changing writers in six months.

In terms of mainstream press coverage, one of the first major salvos came when the first official photo of Evans wearing the uniform and carrying the shield – but still not sporting the mask – appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (10/28/10) with more photos and an interview with the star on how he overcame his fears around taking on the role inside. This first look, of course, got picked up everywhere and discussed in countless blog posts and other stories, which is exactly what the studio was hoping for.

Early interviews with Evans would focus on how he was excited to be part of the character’s history, the obstacles he knew he’d have to be overcoming and how he’s dealt with fan reaction both positive and not-so-much about him donning the flag as well as how he saw the larger Marvel Universe playing out on film.

Entertainment Weekly continued to be a significant source of early looks at the movie, later on debuting the first decent picture of Captain America in full uniform (EW, 1/13/11), including the helmet.

Atwell also become the focus of some press, even if it was just a photo shoot (Esquire, 8/11) that emphasized how beautiful she is.

The tie-in toys and other products for the movie were also among those debuting or otherwise making a big show at the annual Toy Fair convention (Hollywood Reporter, 2/10/11), an event Evans was in attendance at to check out toy-afied version of himself and so on.

Johnston spilled quite a few details about the plot in an interview (EW, 3/3/11) that also featured the first full look at Weaving in full Red Skull garb. And he continued talking about the thematic connections the movie does and doesn’t have to Raiders of the Lost Ark (LAT, 3/29/11) and how that movie was used as an initial template when they were outlining the story.

This was one of the movies Marvel/Paramount brought to the CinemaCon trade event, showing off about 20 minutes of the movie in a couple different segments to the theater and exhibition executives in attendance.

In the wake of reactions to the first full trailer that were generally positive but which did include some skepticism as to the quality of the effects, particularly those that involved turning Evans into a scrawny youth, the actor came out and talked about how those effects had improved (LAT, 4/27/11) and that everything was looking really good and would be in great shape by release.

The movie was one of those brought to the Hero Complex Fest, where Evans was able to do some glad-handing and the second full trailer debuted to the receptive audience, which was a mix of industry players, press and comics/movie geeks.

A feature length profile of Evans (GQ, June, 2011) seemed to be more about how charming and charismatic the actor was as opposed to anything movie-related, but that was probably the goal all along since it could potentially have the effect of bringing more female attention to a comic book movie.

There was a lot of speculation and mulling done in the early days of the movie’s production that the title would be changed for international markets where the idea of someone who is 100% American cheerleader might not be such a great idea. Ultimately, though, the decision was made (New York Times, 7/3/11) to retain the full “Captain America: The First Avenger” title in all but a handful of countries where such sentiment was most virulent since brand recognition was seen as being more important than anything else.

While the movie is opening *during* Comic-Con 2011 and no panel was being planned reports began to surface (THR, 7/5/11) that there would be some sort of presence there that would likely involve Evans. Eventually it was revealed that a special Comic-Con screening of the movie hosted by Evans would be taking place so that the assembled geeks could see the movie while they were in San Diego for that event.

Shortly before Comic-Con the theme returned to Evans’ wrestling with the decision to play the character in the first place (NYT, 7/10/11) and how he got over his nerves and jumped on board.

Overall

I’ll admit right off the bat that I’m completely in the bag for this movie. During my early comic-reading years I was always a huge Avengers fan and since Cap was an integral part of that he was constantly on my radar. I never read his solo book with any regularity (outside of a brief time around ‘88/’89 or so) but always more or less knew what was going on.

So with that being said this campaign works really well for me. The posters, the trailers and everything else come together very nicely and create something that makes me want to see the movie even more than I did before.

Even more importantly there’s nothing here that is actively discouraging me from seeing the movie. So many times these movies have built in audiences like myself that are 98% likely to see the film and the only thing that is going to turn off their desire is a campaign that shows the movie just completely botches the character, even if that’s not the case in the full film. But there’s nothing here that dampens any enthusiasm and that might just be the biggest hurdle that the campaign had to clear.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 07/21/11 – Wired has some details on what exactly the movie’s Comic-Con promotions amounted to.
• 07/22/11 – Both the LAT and the AP have takes on the challenges of selling this movie outside the U.S.
• 07/22/11 – Christina Warren at Mashable goes a little overboard in trying to make the case that social media was a big part of the movie’s campaign. By that I mean “using YouTube” and “having a Facebook” page doesn’t exactly signal great marketing innovation in 2011 from my perspective.

Movie Marketing Madness: Super 8

There’s a generation of filmmakers who are as known for the movies they made as young children or students as for anything they may have produced during their adult years. These are the guys who hit their stride in the late 60′s and early 70′s and whose backyard productions and student films have become the stuff of legend. The two primary examples of this are, of course, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. Speilberg’s biography is always heavy on references to how the director created all sorts of single reel shorts in his backyard and Lucas’ on his unique film school productions. In both cases these match up with the public image of the directors, with Spielberg still being seen as that excitable little boy with a handheld camera and Lucas (more or less) as someone who’s going to do whatever he wants regardless of what anyone else thinks.

The new movie Super 8 uses as its starting point the story of a group of friends in a small Texas town in 1979 who have set out to make their own movie using a Super 8 camera. It’s a group of misfits with Joe (Joel Courney) as their director. Because of their fascination with monster movies and science fiction stories Joe’s dad Jackson (Kyle Chandler), who’s also the local deputy, doesn’t want his son hanging around with them as much as he thinks they’re all a bad influence. One night while shooting near the local railroad tracks a train derails and strange things begin happening around town. Over the next few days dogs disappear, electronics stop working, engines are torn apart and more, all completely baffling to the sheriff. When the military comes into town to take over the investigation things turn from mysterious to ominous as more questions arise than are answered.

Directed by mystery-man J.J. Abrams and produced by Spielberg himself, the movie isn’t meant to be so much a story about what life was like back in the 1970s or anything like that but instead a love letter to the type of movies Spielberg and others made in this era, the kind of wide-eyed wonders that captured the imagination of a generation of moviegoers who watched with wonder as Richard Dreyfuss built a mountain in his living room and such like that.

The Posters

The first – and only – poster for the movie was every bit as interesting as the movie itself promised to be. While the title and main credits for Abrams and Spielberg are oriented traditionally, the image of the five kids and their small camera standing on the landscape and everything around them is sideways so you have to turn your head to the right to see it correctly. That additional real estate gives the design not only a unique perspective but it also simply gives the image more space to breath and gives you a sense of the scope of the action, which is simultaneously huge and very small-scale. Great stuff.

The Trailers

The first trailer, released in May, famously contained no footage that would be in the actual movie since it hadn’t, of course, been shot yet. Instead it’s all about setting the table for the movie and beginning to build anticipation.

The trailer shows a train speeding down the track as on-screen text informs us about a government plan to shut down portions of Area 51 in 1979 and transport materials to a location in Ohio, with the train presumably then being the method of said transportation. But suddenly a pick-up truck slams through the gates on a dark night and then turns to run head-on into the train, making it clear it’s not an accident. The wreck that ensues sends the entire train careening off the tracks, with all the cars flying around wildly. When the dust settles a bit the camera focuses on one car laying on its side. Suddenly something starts pounding from the inside of the car, dents appearing in the metal until the door of the car comes flying off. And with that the on-screen text informs us that whatever it is that’s inside is arriving now.

It is an enormously effective trailer in terms of getting people talking about the movie. Indeed because it didn’t contain any film footage (at least according to Abrams), the entire point seems to have been to generate buzz, not only based on the fact that it debuted in front of Iron Man 2, the biggest movie of the summer at that point, as well as the fact that it served as a jumping off point for the online ARG aspect of the campaign.

Quite a while later the first full-length trailer (released on Twitter) was released that gave quite a few more details as to the plot. It starts off by setting up the main characters we’ll be watching, a group of kids in a small rural town that are trying to make their own monster movie. But the one kid’s dad isn’t thrilled about that and wants him to find other friends. Then a train derails right in the middle of downtown, a train containing something mysterious. The kids continue to film despite the military presence that descends on the town, the disappearance of people and dogs and other strange goings-on. The kids take it upon themselves to figure out what’s going on and seem to be the only believers in town.

The trailer shows very clearly that the movie is just going to ooze with the aura of both Spielberg and Abrams, combining the strengths of the two into something that just might be glorious. The action here moves along nicely and almost nothing of any substance is shown. Instead it’s all about playing into the emotions of the audience, promising a couple hours in the theater that are filled with an intriguing story and interesting characters as well as kind of a cool monster movie.

The trailer does, though, contain some of the same footage that was seen in the teaser so some of the hype from earlier might have been just that.

Just a half a week from release another trailer, a 90-second version that was also sort of a TV spot, debuted during the “2011 MTV Movie Awards.” This one starts off in much the same way as the previous version – with the train accident that happens while the kids are filming – but then goes into some new territory. It highlights much more the mysterious happenings and the military response to those happenings, with lots of scenes of military people acting very suspiciously about what they are or aren’t looking for. While the short running time means there’s an inherent tightness to the spot there’s also a lot of new stuff here in terms of the investigations being run – one by adults and one by kids – into what has broken loose in this small town.

Online

The official website opens and begins playing one of the 30-second TV spots that was produced and released. That in and of itself says something about how the campaign here is trying to reach a mass audience who’s more interested in some spectacle than with deep stuff about shooting a movie and an emotional investigation into the mystery.

The “Story” section just has a one-paragraph synopsis of the plot while the “Gallery” has 20 stills from the movie and “Videos” has both trailers and six TV spots, including the Super Bowl commercial. “Cast, Crew & Notes” is still labeled as Coming Soon, unfortunately.

There are also links to a couple sections that will be covered down below.

As with Cloverfield there was a wide-ranging ARG that launched at about the same time as the first teaser trailer.

The game started off with a link, barely visible at the end of the trailer, to the site ScariestThingIEverSaw which took people to the remote desktop of an old green-screen computer monitor. The biggest thing there was a countdown clock that, once it expired, prompted people to print out the screen. Only what they printed wasn’t the screen but a series of newspaper pages containing an ad for the Rocket Popppeteers.

When the pages were printed and re-aligned, more clues began to emerge involving a PO Box in Minot, North Dakota and what might potentially have been a warning from the same person whose computer was being accessed previously.

The Rocket Poppeteer viral was revitalized briefly around Comic-Con, with an ice cream truck featuring that branding tooling around the San Diego convention center including a Twitter account that informed followers where the truck would be. Someone was also there handing out t-shirts. Shortly after that an official website for the Poppeteers was launched that played in to the brand’s “legacy.” The efforts continued at other events appealing to fans, including New York Comic-Con.

The viral continued with other websites, occasionally coming back into the real world as those who had signed up to become Poppeteers received their certificates and such. Eventually more chats and clues were unveiled after the discovery of the Hook, Line and Minker website, which gave some clues as to the passwords to access new material.

A more serious online “viral” effort kicked in after the release of the first full-length trailer. That trailer contained an Easter Egg URL that led to an Editing Room portion of the official website that contained filmstrip footage from government cameras, most of which was missing aside from a few clips of scientists talking about something’s biology and such. More clips were unlocked after packages of actual 8mm film were sent to various press outlets that prompted them to check out the footage online as well. Updates would continue to be made to the Editing Room as more clips were unveiled and more promotional material sent out to the press. There was also a section of the official site called the “Development Room” but you had to request access to that by using Facebook Connect and only select people were approved. How exactly that paid off I haven’t heard yet.

The movie’s Facebook page has the usual array of photos, vidoes and updates on promotional and marketing activities. Similar updates can be found on the Twitter profile, though that was also put into serious duty surrounding the release of the first full theatrical trailer and for some other purposes and I have to say it was nice to see someone actually figure out how to use Twitter effectively for movie marketing purposes.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

The movie was one of those that Paramount announced it would be advertising during Super Bowl XLV this year. The spot that aired feels very much like a cross between Abrams and Speilberg but tells very little about the story. We see the same sort of train accident we did in the teaser trailer, but this time there’s also some human beings involved. There’s a young boy, a camera, a police officer, various army guys looking very put out and more. We never get a shot of whatever the alien or monster or whatever is – some people think there’s a glimpse or two in there somewhere – but we do see the havoc that it’s bringing to this small Americana town, which appears to be substantial.

The version of the commercial that aired didn’t seem to be the final one though, as reports came in that new images were being inserted into the ending of the video on Apple.com on some sort of regular basis that provided different clues about the movie’s story.

Right after the Super Bowl spot aired an online campaign started with ads that featured footage and scenes that were shown in that commercial.

More TV advertising was done in a commercial spot that ran 60 seconds in length and featured just the slightest amount of new footage while bridging the gap between the previous TV ads and the first full trailer. Further TV spots would be run, with some of them playing up the action and horror elements of the movie while others played it as more of a mystery film. Some commercials even included footage and audio of the scientists that are hinted at in the online ARG (more on that below) talking about the mystery of the object they’re studying and what the potential ramifications could be if it escaped. That filled in some of the gaps between the online and more traditional campaigns without giving away too much.

An interactive trailer for the movie was included in copies of the Portal 2 video game that let people run around inside the train that is featured in the movie just prior to and just after the crash that’s depicted. While there wasn’t anything to interact with various clues were seen in the environment. This trailer showed the door being smashed off of the train car the creature, whatever it is, escapes from and overall this is a pretty cool promotion for the movie.

The outdoor/in-theater ad displays that were placed got into the “viral” game, with some of them containing a secret hole to look in and get clues on how to unlock clips in the “Editing Room” part of the online experience.

The movie got some serious screentime during one of the last few episodes of “American Idol” with the finalists visiting the Bad Robot production offices and getting a sneak peak of the movie along with some Super 8 cameras of their own from Abrams to document their trips to their hometowns.

A surprise movie-related insert in some recent DC Comic issues featured a blank panel where people could create their own artwork and submit it, though what happened then is still a bit unclear.

There was an interesting check-in based promotion that was run in conjunction with 7-Eleven. Every 88th person to check-in at one of the chain’s convenience stores won tickets to see the movie and other multiples of 88 were entered to win a zero-gravity flight or even a sub-orbital trip into space. There were also Rocket Poppeteers branded cups for Slurpees and a “Berry Blaster” flavor of the icy treat, though all that was sans any overt branding for the movie. That tie-in (MediaPost, 6/3/11) was supported with radio and online advertising.

Media and Publicity

The movie first hit some people’s radars when rumors began surfacing that a secret teaser trailer for it would be attached to 2010′s Iron Man 2. Few details were available since the trailer seemed to be not a physical print that could be screened beforehand but a digital file that had a date-sensitive lock keeping it safe until Iron Man’s initial screenings.

There then came much speculation as to what the movie was actually about. Half the internet thought it was some sort of tie-in to the Abrams’-created Cloverfield, half the internet insisted it had nothing to do with that movie. It wasn’t until just before the first teaser trailer was released that details started to come into focus, though even those were just about the production and not anything about the movie or its story.

An interview with Abrams at Comic-Con 2010 was not all that insightful in terms of additional plot details, but it did continue the theme of much of the early press coverage in that it emphasized the director’s wanting the movie to be an homage to Steven Spielberg, both as a director and as someone who Abrams idolized as a youth.

At the same time the Super Bowl spot debuted, giving the audience their first look at actual footage from the movie, the first real in-depth story (Los Angeles Times, 2/6/11) about the film appeared, with Abrams giving some (still cryptic) details about the story and how it’s actually the conglomeration of a few different story ideas that never got completely fleshed out. The story talks at length about how Abrams turned to Spielberg and others for inspiration and advice about various aspects of casting and filming, reinforcing the notion that Abrams is first and foremost a huge movie fan.

There was plenty of press generated by the release of the first full-length trailer, not so much for the contents of the trailer or what it showed but the fact that it was released on Twitter (MediaPost, 3/11/11) and utilizing Twitvid for hosting the video. That tactic was specifically utilized because, according to the studio, they wanted to go for the most efficient way for people to spread the trailer themselves. The claim was that this was the first time it had happened (CNET, 3/11/11) but that’s up for interpretation.

More buzz was created after Paramount screened 22 minutes of the movie’s footage for the press as part of their 2011 preview presentation. The footage, by all accounts, played like gangbusters for the crowd and eliminated any nagging concerns in the audience that the movie wouldn’t live up to its potential.

The screening of some footage was also the centerpiece of the presentation at the CinemaCon (Hollywood Reporter, 3/29/11) exhibition industry trade show, where it was one of the titles Paramount brought to impress theater owners, and the studio brought 40 whole minutes of footage to the 2011 Cannes Film Festival for the insiders there.

Just a week or so out from release there was a huge feature on Abrams (New York Times, 5/29/11) and how he was so interested in mysteries, creating movies, TV shows and more – as well as their attendant marketing campaigns – that were wrapped in question marks and the unknown, something that keeps the audience always guessing as to what might be coming next. Similar, though smaller scale, features would eventually run that made it clear how much this movie is true to Abrams’ small-scale production philosophy (Wired 6/7/11) and how the director was constantly trying to channel Speilberg and the Amblin mindset (Time, 6/7/11) as he was in production.

Just about a week from release a new site, Super8Secret.com, appeared and seemed to be tied in some way to a Twitter hashtag and Facebook page. It was eventually revealed as a site where people could sign up for free advance screenings of the movie, something obviously being done to get people talking about the film to their friends and connections.

As mentioned above the movie got some promotional love during the “2011 MTV Movie Awards” with Speilberg, Abrams and much of the younger cast hitting the stage to introduce the new trailer and make an unstated appeal for young people to be in the audience (LAT, 6/6/11) when the movie opens.

Overall

Because the movie comes from Abrams it’s inevitable that the campaign will be judged against that for 2008′s Cloverfield, which he may not have directed but was no less integral in making. That campaign featured what was at the time a revolutionary usage of online video, hidden clues on mysterious websites and other really innovative online techniques, all of which kept people talking about the movie in advance of its release. That alternate-reality-game was so massive it dwarfed, to some extent, the more traditional campaign that was run closer to the film’s release and which was meant to reach the average moviegoer who couldn’t care less who Jamie and Teddy were.

The ARGs for this movie don’t seem to be quite as substantial in scale but, I suspect, are at least somewhat more closely tied to the movie’s story. That’s particularly true of the “Editing Room” component, which has been dealing out small clues relating to what it is that has escaped in the small town the movie’s set in.

Aside from that there’s a very good campaign going on here that sells the intent of the movie as well as the movie itself quite well. Watch the shot of XXX warning about the coming train collision and it takes you right back to similar reaction shots in any Spielberg movies from the late 70s through the mid 80s. The TV spots and trailers all work together nicely and there’s certainly brand consistency throughout all the marketing elements here.

What remains to be seen, though, is if the average moviegoer is up for any sort of mystery this summer. Last year Inception broke out as a largely unexpected hit despite its being more challenging for the audience to wrap its collective head around than any of the sequels, franchise launches or adaptations that were sold with campaigns that told people exactly what they could expect. Lightening could strike again and audiences could give in to the curiosity that’s been created here, giving the movie a shot despite not having everything laid out for them in clear block letters.

NOTE: A big thanks to Super 8 News, which has been following all aspects of the campaign, including lots of the ARG developments, very closely.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 06/08/11 – A fan-made poster done in the style of the legendary Drew Struzan caused a bit of ruckus for a while when people thought it was really from that artist, something mildly believable because of his long-standing connections with Spielberg.
• 06/08/11 – The Twitter tie-in got a lot of press from ClickZ, WSJ and many other tech-oriented publications and sites.
• 06/09/11 – The full “Editing Room” video was released just the day before the movie hit theaters, an obvious attempt to get people who may have felt some of the mystery was off-putting more comfortable with things. I’m surprised to see it released, though, since this would have made a great easter egg on the DVD.
• 06/14/11 – Simon Dumeneco at AdAge theorizes that positive buzz on Twitter helped the movie achieve its opening weekend win but I remain a little skeptical on that front since I still see Twitter as only a fraction of overall word-of-mouth.
• 06/14/11 – Abrams made a brief appearance on Quora to answer a few questions and engage in some dialogue.

Movie Marketing Madness: Thor

To date the most successful super hero movies, both in terms of critical and commercial reception, have been about very human characters. Iron Man, Batman, Spider-Man…these are all characters that may fight crime and terrorism and such like that but the issues their alter egos deal with make them very human and frail. They’re overcoming a massive father-based inferiority complex, they’re acting out after the death of their parents or they’re just trying to act responsibly while also winning the girl of their dreams.

The movies that have been more mixed bags (I’m talking conventional wisdom here and your personal mileage will vary) are the ones about the super-strong, invulnerable heroes that never seem to be under any actual immediate danger. The Hulk and Superman spring to mind here, with their recent films doing well enough but not achieving on the same level as some others. The thinking seems to be that these characters who can do just about anything aren’t vulnerable enough to allow the audience to connect or relate in any meaningful way.

So how about a movie about a mythical god?

Introduced into the Marvel Universe in 1962 and now making his big screen debut is Thor. Based on the mythical Norse god of thunder, Thor has been a staple of the Marvel line of comics pretty consistently since he debuted, eventually becoming a founding member of The Avengers, firmly affixed as one of that team’s “Big Three” characters along with Captain America and Iron Man.

With relative newcomer Chris Hemsworth in the title role and wielding the enchanted hammer Mjolnir, Goldilocks’ movie portrays the thunderer as a petulant child. Eyed (pun oh so massively intended) by his father Odin (Anthony Hopkins) as the heir to the throne of eternal Asgard, Thor’s headstrong desire to seek out battle even when there’s piece eventually leads Odin to banish his son to Midgard (Earth). There, now powerless and without his BFH, Thor is discovered by scientist Jane Foster (Natalie Portman) and her team of colleagues. Thor’s brashness has followed him, though, and he soon finds himself working to defend Earth from the machinations of his half-brother Loki, (Tom Hiddleston), the god of mischief who covets Odin’s throne.

While the plot of the film is certainly important and interesting in and of itself, it’s also a stage-setting device to introduce the character in advance of next year’s Avengers movie. There he’ll be united with Iron Man (two movies already under his armor), the Hulk (one movie under his purple elastic waistband), Captain America (his solo movie comes out later this summer and will then be under his chain-mail) and Nick Fury (who’s made small appearances in most of the mentioned films) as well as other characters like Hawkeye and the Black Widow. So it’s half about the character himself and half about getting him ready for his next adventure.

The Posters

The movie’s first poster was a stark – and dark – one. Thor stands alone with his back half turned toward the camera and hammer firmly in hand. Everything on the poster is in (glossy) black and white aside from the character’s cape, which stands out in bright red. The poster seemed designed to make a strong impact on the audience while doing little else than announcing the movie was coming out soon and giving a veiled hint as to what the character would look like.

The next poster seemed more about intimidating the audience than anything else. It just features Thor staring out at the camera, his face tinted dark read and The God of Thunder” appearing in front of his face. There’s not much there to comment on, which makes me think the studio is just going for the idea that the character will be enough to bring audiences in. Shortly after that one was released a series of similar posters for other characters. So Loki was “The God of Mischief,” Sif is “The Goddess of War,” Jane Foster is “The Woman of Science,” Heimdall is “The Guardian of Worlds” and Odin is “The King of Asgard.”

A special poster was created specifically to promote the 3D release, with a shot of Thor grasping his hammer in the middle of some sort of storm and the copy “Courage is immortal” at the top and an appeal at the bottom to see the film in IMAX 3D.

Two additional posters were released around the time of WonderCon, one with Thor and one with Loki but with both of them sporting their ceremonial helmets. Considering Thor hasn’t appeared in the trailers with this helmet on (I don’t think) this is one of the first official looks the audience has gotten of him with the helmet, something that’s pretty consistent to the character in the comics.

A special poster was created specifically to promote the 3D release, with a shot of Thor grasping his hammer in the middle of some sort of storm and the copy “Courage is immortal” at the top and an appeal at the bottom to see the film in IMAX 3D.

A couple different takes on a theatrical one-sheet were developed, though I’m not sure which one is officially the final version. One has a gallery of faces, Thor being the most prominent both at the top facing the camera and toward the bottom with his hammer raised high in the halls of Asgard.

Another had the titular character smashing the hammer on the ground as the supporting cast is arrayed behind him. Both are slick, both are fancy and both work in the same way though for different reasons.

The Trailers

Released shortly after the poster, the first trailer is primarily focused on introducing us to the main characters and showing us the circumstances that they’re operating in.

The spot opens with Agent Coulson interrogating Thor after he’s smacked around a handful of highly-trained SHIELD agents, trying to figure out who this guy is. It’s then that we flashback to Asgard, where Thor has incurred the displeasure of his father Odin by bringing war to their peaceful world. So he casts him out to Earth, where he meets Jane Foster and the two, of course, begin a relationship.

We get shots of the battles that make up the movie, including a fight with Thor’s brother Loki and, primarily, The Destroyer, who runs through a small town destroying things with his eye beams like something out of The Day the Earth Stood Still.

The trailer keeps things moving at a fast pace and it comes off as selling the movie as a big, epic fantasy-based action movie, which I think is exactly the tone it needed to set.

The second trailer played things a lot straighter and gave even more of a sense of an epic-scale story being played out. We open with two events: Coulson finding the hammer and Portman and her family hitting him with their car in the middle of nowhere. That leads to some fun interactions with Denning and then some exposition by Thor about where he comes from. When Portman asks him who he really is that’s the cue to bring in some shots of Asgard and Thor throwing his hammer around at various mystical enemies as well as showing down with first Loki and then the Destroyer. It ends with lots of quickly cut action sequences and then some more shots of Thor throwing down with a huge monster.

Again, this one plays it a lot straighter and I think shows the movie to be a more entertaining one. Where the first one seemed primarily focused on making sure the audience knew this was part of the growing film version of the Marvel Universe, this one just tries to sell it as a action-packed thrill ride with a character who solves most of his problems with a BFH.

Online

The official site opens with a pretty stripped down offering, just an invitation to watch the trailer, a Story synopsis, a few videos and a small photo gallery. I don’t mean to disparage these offerings since they’re very much just introductory content, but there isn’t the over-emphasis on flashy graphics with 28 different little things flashing and moving like are on some sites so it’s a little disconcertion.

When you choose to enter the site you can do so either through Earth or Asgard though the navigation and content are the same no matter which path you choose. All that’s different is the background of the page.

The first section here is “About” and there you’ll find The Story, the same short synopsis we saw earlier, and “Filmmakers” which gives credentials on those behind the camera on the movie.

Next is “Characters” which gives you information on the characters in the movie (naturally) as well as background and histories of the actors portraying them. That’s a nice way to inform the audience who’s not steeped in mythology some clarification on who’s who.

“Downloads” actually has a handful of games to play as well as an invitation to check out the movie’s universe in the form of an interactive guide allowing users to navigate a SHIELD installation, Asgard and more and learn about the characters and locations along the way, unlocking exclusive content as they did so.

There are about 17 stills from the movie in the “Gallery” and the “Videos” section just has the teaser and theatrical Trailers as well as the Super Bowl commercial.

The movie’s Facebook page has quite a bit of community activity, with many people Liking various updates, most of which are of course blatantly promotional in nature. There are also plenty of photos and videos on the page.

There was also a Flickr group that people could contribute to with their own photos of the Thor’s hammer theater standee.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

The big advertising push began with a spot for the movie that aired during Super Bowl XLV earlier this year. The spot doesn’t offer a whole that’s new from the earlier trailer, starting off with Thor’s escape from the SHIELD facility and including a few shots of Asgard and some of the various fights he gets in with The Destroyer, some sort of mythological beast and so on. It’s a good spot but again doesn’t show much in the way of new footage so isn’t super-exciting.

Further TV commercials would take varying approaches to selling the movie, with some playing it as a straight (though obviously huge-scale) action film and others being very clear about it being part of the Marvel Universe by showing clips from Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk before giving way to Thor. Further TV advertising would continue to pull primarily from the trailers while adding in the occasional new scene.

There was later a fun little addition added to the ad push with a Thor-version of the “Darth Vader/VW” ad that ran during the 2011 Super Bowl, this time with a kid running around in Thor gear eventually blowing up his dad’s car with a bolt of lightening.

Outdoor/in-theater advertising was done as well on a couple of fronts. A giant version of Thor’s hammer being used as a standee in theater lobbies and presumably elsewhere. And a huge outdoor billboard ad was run that was actually made up of two parts, one with Thor running toward his hammer, which is on the other sign, giving the combined image a nice sense of action.

Marvel started the ball rolling early with their usual batch of new offerings meant to get fans excited for the movie and provide those just being introduced to the character a jumping on point. Those offerings included a reworking of Thor’s origins in the Marvel Universe and a limited series about the fight to reclaim Asgard as his own. There was also a straight-to-DVD animated movie created that told the story of Thor’s early years and which is scheduled to hit shelves just a few weeks after the theatrical film is released and a four-part animated version of the “Thor & Loki: Blood Brothers” limited series that hit iTunes, PlayStation Network and other distribution points.

Marvel’s promotions of course included the requisite overviews of the character’s history and recommendations on where to read that history. The publisher also, as it’s done quite often with their characters that are about to hit the screen, launched a new monthly ongoing series for Thor that took the character in some new directions and is intended to be more broadly accessible by those seeking out more stories with the character for the first time.

In the wake of the second trailer a partnership with entertainment check-in service GetGlue was announced that awarded those who checked-in to watching that trailer and shared it with their Twitter and Facebook friends a special Thor virtual sticker.

Car company Acura was among the movie’s promotional partners and launched the JoinSHIELD site that kicked off at C2E2 but then really moved into higher gear at WonderCon 2011, with SHIELD cars (Acuras, of course) and recruitment stations at the event where video promotions were run and where people could have ID badges made. That effort eventually expanded to anyone online who signed in via Facebook Connect. Acura also ran co-branded TV spots in support of their promotion, with the usual sort of description of the car’s features running while outside the car you can see SHIELD agents going up against The Destroyer.

Retailer Walmart setup a portal where visitors could check out all sorts of video, character bios and more about the movie.

Convenience store chain 7-11 was once again a partner, offering straws with character action figures on them and special collector cups for those buying Slurpees in stores. Online ads were run as well that showed off the collector cups and encouraged people to visit stores.

Dr. Pepper was a partner and launched the “Quest for the Can” promotion that encouraged fans to be on the lookout for one of only a few special Hammer-decorated cans or caps. Finding one of those special codes meant you won a variety of experiences from flying in a fighter jet to getting a personal training session on how to bulk up. Other codes on cans and bottles awarded other prizes such as one-month subscriptions to Marvel Digital Comics, movie tickets or, of course, Dr. Pepper. The promotion was supported by co-branded TV spots that also featured Stan Lee, something I think he did for the Dr. Pepper spots for Iron Man 2 previously.

Media and Publicity

Outside of casting announcements and such, the first real publicity for the movie came in January of 2010 with the news of the movie’s May 6th release, a date Paramount seemingly jumped at after reports circulated that Spider-Man 4, which had originally claimed that weekend, was indefinitely delayed due to creative issues.

Then, unfortunately, the issue of cast came back up as Stuart Townsend, originally slated to play Thor’s friend Fandral, left the production (Variety, 1/10/10) citing the usually vague “creative differences.” Townsend was then quickly replaced with Joshua Dallas in the role.

With all the geeks wondering how Thor was going to fit into the rapidly expanding cinematic Marvel Universe it was encouraging news to hear that Clark Gregg would reprise his role as Agent Coulsen of SHIELD in the film, tying it directly into Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk and ultimately to the upcoming Avengers flick.

About halfway through the production the movie was struck by a bit of rumor-mongering that there was dissension on the set, particularly between Hopkins and Chenworth, with the former taking issue with the younger actor’s abilities. That prompted Marvel and Paramount to get Branagh in front of the press (Los Angeles Times, 4/1/10) to emphasize how well things were going and how well everyone was getting along.

On a more positive note, the release of the first official image from the movie, featuring Chenworth as the title character, got a lot more positive buzz going about how faithful, especially to the modern redesign of the character, the cinematic incarnation seemed to be.

The movie then got the glowing treatment from one of the TV entertainment magazine shows, which is where the audience got what I think was the first look at Hopkins in his Odin getup amidst all the talk about how great it was for everyone to work together and how buff Chenworth has gotten for his title role.

Various pictures were released that showed more of Asgard and other characters, all in anticipation of the movie’s presence at Comic-Con 2010, where Mjolnir and the hall of Asgard, which was featured in one of those released photos, were both setup and which people could take pictures with. Also there was The Infinity Gauntlet, a pretty famous Macguffin with the Marvel Universe and one that showed the movie was drawing liberally from the comics.

Just as Comic-Con was starting, a piece of concept art was released that was very artistic and very cool and which served to undo some of the less than enthusiastic reaction the set photos had been met with. That end was also achieved through the five-minute piece of footage that was shown at the convention, which served to show off the movie more fully and which really seemed to get the audience excited.

Interviews with Hemsworth would focus on just what a big burden the actor was taking on, not only in terms of portraying a fictional god but doing so first in his own movie and then in the collective Avengers film.

The movie was also one of those that got some attention at the 2011 Toy Fair convention, an event Hemsworth attended himself to see how he’s been translated into action figure form.

Branagh continued to talk with the press about how the story was crafted to make the character of Thor – who is, after all, an immortal and massively powerful god – relatable to the general audience (Entertainment Weekly, 2/18/11), including how they made sure he had something approaching a sense of humor and how he’s really just trying to prove himself to his father and others.

Hemsworth was the focus of the story again in the wake of the announcement (THR, 3/24/11) that he would be named “Male Star of Tomorrow” at CinemaCon this year. It was also at CinemaCon that Marvel/Paramount showed exhibition executives about 20 minutes of footage from the movie in order to get them excited about it.

The attention turned back to Branagh in a major story (THR, 4/13/11) that covered everything from Hemsworth’s casting to the history of how a Thor movie has circulated around Hollywood for over a decade. The focus, though, was on how this was not only the most ambitious project Marvel has taken on to date but how it could be the movie that brings Branagh back into Hollywood’s good graces as a director after a decade or so of movies that haven’t resonated with audiences or critics and during which he seemed to pay more attention to acting. Another story closer to release (NYT, 5/2/11) would also look at how the director was attracted to the project as a way to stretch his talents a bit and see if directing such a blockbuster epic suited him.

How exactly Acura came to be the film’s official automobile promotional partner was the subject of some news (New York Times, 4/19/11) that talked about the online game being run and more details of the deal between the car maker and the studio. The partnership with the car company continued to be fodder for stories (AdAge, 5/2/11)that pointed out it was the first such deal for Acura.

The cast of course made the press rounds, including Alexander appearing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” with a new clip from the movie and Hemsworth hosting a marathon of Marvel super hero movies on FX. And the Marvel team showed up at the NYSE.

Overall

This campaign goes right up to that line that, once cross, almost makes judging the effectiveness of one individual element over another a pointless exercise because the scope and breadth are just too much. It’s not quite that big but it’s flirting with that line.

As it is this is a pretty good campaign that works hard to make the characters as accessible as possible to the audience. Sometimes it seems it’s making a play for the masses too much at the expense of those who already Thor/Avengers/Marvel Universe fans. The marketing certainly emphasizes Thor’s time on Earth more than anything else but it winds up working the best when it shows him swinging his hammer at Frost Giants or something similarly outsized, the kind of spectacle that people are apparently convinced will work in the movie but are afraid to play up in the campaign.

The strongest element of the campaign is, honestly, the press and publicity area. The studio has been great at getting stories about the movie in the press and that’s done more to move the needle, from my perception, on people’s interest than anything else. A big part of that is based on the movie’s appearances at conventions and other events, which have given attendees a chance to get hands-on with the brand.

But really there’s not much that could be classified as “weak” here. Some of the clips that were released to get people talking come the closest to this label since, again, they’re pulled mostly from Thor’s banishment on Midgard and come off as unintentionally funny more than anything. But they’re easily countered by some of the better elements of the marketing itself and all in all there’s a lot to like about this campaign for fans of the character as well as those just looking for some good entertainment as the summer movie season kicks off.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 05/05/11: Not everyone was a fan of the SHIELD viral, feeling it took away some of the mystery of the organization, while others were impressed with the promotional kits that were sent out.

Movie Marketing Madness: Love and Other Drugs

There are few things that make me uncomfortable.

OK, that’s just an outright lie. Just about everything makes me uncomfortable. I wake up feeling awkward and it just gets worse form there.

But very few make me as uncomfortable as the commercials for erectile dysfunction drugs. Stuck in-between the beer spots and ads promising us that every kiss begins with the letter it starts with are ones that feature middle-aged folks who are planning a night of romance with some pharmaceutical help.

The new movie Love and Other Drugs is about the introduction of those little blue pills to the world. Specifically it’s about a pharmaceutical salesman (Jake Gyllenhaal) who charms his way through doctor’s offices racking up sales figures and receptionist-shaped notches on his bedpost. One day, through a bit of deception, he meets a young lady (Anne Hathaway) and the two begin the purely physical relationship they’re both looking for, he because he’s a player and she because she’s in the early stages of multiple sclerosis. But of course things get more complicated and the relationship grows despite the initial intentions of both people.

The Posters

I was more than a little shocked when I first saw the poster for the movie since it doesn’t try to be anything other than plain about what the story involves. The only thing on the poster is Gyllenhaal and Hathaway luxuriating nakedly in bad, pillows covering up their naughty bits. That makes it pretty clear to the audience that the movie is about these two people finding themselves in bed quite a bit but that they seem pretty happy about that. Which, lets face it, is pretty easy to understand.

The Trailers

The trailer starts out by showing us how much of a player Gyllenhaal is and what tricks he has developed to charm the ladies, which has its benefits for both his personal life and his professional one. But when that crosses a line and he observes Hathaway’s breast exam she beats him up in the parking lot before going out for coffee and winding up in bed together for, the dialogue implies, a no-strings-attached fling. But then things get more personal and it winds up being him that wants more of a relationship while she wants to keep him at arms’ length. The trailer doesn’t go in to why, though.

It’s a decent trailer that shows the movie will live or die based on how much the audience feels the connection between the two leads. It also presents the movie as a known quantity with few surprises – it includes what I presume to be the finale – that may upset people’s expectations. Knowing what is keeping Hathaway’s character emotionally detached there may be some problems with that as they find elements to the story that aren’t hinted at here, though. But the trailer makes the case for the movie being a light, breezy and amusing romantic comedy that isn’t going to upset any apple carts.

The movie then got a red-band restricted trailer that starts off establishing Gyllenhaal’s character as a ladies man in a much more explicit way than the first trailer did. We then get more explicit versions of other scenes we’ve seen before, mostly in terms of the language that’s used in those scenes. We’re also shown that the movie’s focus on erectile dysfunction drugs does pay off in a scene in which Gyllenhaal has to visit the doctor because he’s having an extended reaction to the same thing he’s selling to doctors.

Online

As usual the official website opens by playing the trailer. Once you enter the site and stop the full-screen video from playing there as well the first section of content is “About the Film” which just has a three sentence synopsis of the story.

Second up is “Video” which just has the trailer and then there’s the “Photo Gallery” that has just six stills from the movie in it. “Downloads” has just three Wallpapers. Lastly there’s a “What’s Your Love Personality” quiz that you can take if you’re so inclined.

Much of what’s on the movie’s Facebook page appears to be hidden behind the “Like” wall, meaning you have to Like the page before you can see it. But if you go back to the Wall there are the standard sort of updates about the film’s marketing and publicity. There’s also video, photos and even a Check-In partnership with GetGlue.

Advertising and Cross Promotions

I think there’s been some TV advertising done, much of which has just re-edited and shortened the trailer to fit the 30-second time limit. These have played the movie up as a straight romantic comedy without any of the melodrama or heart strings that the end of the trailer hints at.

Media and Publicity

Since the movie is about finding love under difficult circumstances, much of the press involved Hathaway’s personal romantic life (Vogue, 11/10) but which also took a look at the actress’ career to date.

Hathaway also got creative adoration from her director in the press (Los Angeles Times, 11/2/10) where he went on about how dedicated she was to her performance and how she was, in his words, at “the height of her powers” in this movie.

Some stories also focused on how the movie diverged from the real life (Fast Company, 11/15/10) of the man who Gyllenhaal’s character is based on and who wrote the book that inspired the film while still retaining its spirit.

There was coverage too of the fact that this fell well out of director Zwick’s usual filmmaking scope (New York Times, 11/19/10) since he’s usually more prone to sweeping epics that have a ton of emotional undercurrent than a movie that’s focused on relationships and, to the point, a lot of sex.

The fact that the two stars saw each other naked a lot – and how they went about dealing with that and approaching a story filled with sex and nudity – was the subject of a number of stories (LAT, 11/21/10) that also focused on the fact that this wasn’t the first time the two had been paired romantically on film.

There were also the usual other profiles and interviews with the two stars as they made the rounds of the press and the talk shows and everything else.

Overall

I’m not sure what audience is going to latch on to this campaign since it doesn’t seem to fall in to any of the usual easy-to-define buckets. While at one point it seems to embrace the idea of it being a romantic comedy at other times it almost seems to actively reject that label by showing two people who are only out for their own pleasures. It also seems to be making an active appeal to men with the way Gyllenhaal’s character is portrayed, which is a bit unusual for a pure-play rom-com. So there’s a bit of a disjointed feel about the campaign not because it doesn’t know what it is – I actually think it has a strong and consistent identity about itself – but because it defied conventions.

But the campaign does know what it’s doing and so presents a movie that’s definitely geared toward adults and so doesn’t shy away from being graphic about selling the film for what it is: the story of two people who are just looking for a little physical pleasure in their lives but who realize there might be something more in the relationship they’ve reluctantly started on. All the elements of the campaign work well together pretty well and it’s all complimented by a decent publicity push that allows the issues within the movie – specifically all the sexual content – to be addressed in ways the paid push just can’t.

Movie Marketing Madness: Skyline

There are two kinds of alien invasion movies that are generally made: Either the action unfurls on a global scale and we see the world uniting against the new and unknown threat in a massive display of cooperation as we all realize we’re human beings. Or the camera stays firmly on one person, family or group of people – be they friends or individuals who find themselves in one place completely by happenstance – as they seek to just stay together and stay alive amidst the surreal day they’re having.

Firmly in the second camp, apparently, is the new movie Skyline. The movie, which stars a bunch of relatively unknown actors or those who are mostly recognizable as “that guy,” follows a group of friends and random Los Angeles apartment building neighbors on the day the aliens appear. Far from establishing first contact, the visitors are simply harvesting humans, dispersing a mysterious blue light that, once you look into it, captures you and sucks you up into the ship, where things are probably going to go downhill quickly. The same ships and events are unfolding around the world but our group of survivors see escaping out of the city is their only chance to survive.

The Posters

The movie’s first teaser poster takes us to ground level of the alien’s invasion, with the city of Los Angeles shown as thousands of people are drawn up in to the hovering ships by the ghostly blue light. It sets the expectation that the movie will be operating on a massive scale.

The second, theatrical one-sheet used a combination of that same sort of image, the masses being pulled by the alien’s mysterious blue light up to their fate on the massive ship, with that of the first promotional image that was released of the two guys standing on the rooftop surveying the carnage, guns in hand as if that’s going to do something against the huge ship that’s hovering over the city.

Both posters work alright and certainly show that the Earth, as represented by the citizenry of Los Angeles, is having a very, very bad day.

The Trailers

The initial trailer starts off with dire warnings, including some brought to us by newscasters, of what might be the outcome of any aliens were to actually land on Earth. Shortly after that the camera cuts to mysterious blue lights landing in the middle of Los Angeles (I think) and spreading from their points of impact. We then see ships begin to appear above where those flames are engulfing the city.

But the really freaky stuff happens next as those ships open from the bottom and begin to lift people off the ground as you hear them screaming.

As a vehicle for setting the stage for the movie and creating a definite tone for what’s to come this trailer works very well. It’s largely wordless save for those news broadcasts and aside from the screaming at the very end. So all in all a very good launch to the mainstream audience for the movie.

A second trailer offers a bit more of the story. We again open in L.A. with mysterious blue lights descending from the sky, but this time the action moves into an apartment bedroom, where one of the occupants makes the mistake of looking into the light and is then sucked through the window and into the hovering ship.

The small group of people we’re going to follow are introduced – though none by name – as we see them trying to figure out just what’s going on and then, once they realize what that is, try to survive as long as possible. While we get plenty of shots of the ships that are hovering over cities around the world we get only a few quick glimpses of the aliens themselves, which appear to be huge and almost seem like a techno-organic mix. We do see lots of military fighters taking on the alien crafts, telling us that this is going to be another take on the “Earth vs. Aliens” theme.

It’s a pretty cool trailer that makes it clear the movie is about the spectacle and that the characters are simply vehicles through which we witness the scope of what’s going on.

Online

The movie’s official website starts off, as so many do, by playing the second trailer. There’s also here on the opening page a photo-upload tool called “Experience the Tranceformation” that allows you to see what you would look like under the thrall of the alien’s blue light capture beam.

Entering the full site, the first section is “About” and its there that you can view a Synopsis, bios and film histories of the Cast, Crew and Production Team as well as download full Production Notes if you wish to do so.

There are about a dozen stills in the “Gallery” and the “Videos” area has both trailers, a half-dozen TV Spots and a collection of extended Film Clips. Finally, “Downloads” has eight Wallpapers for you to grab or a few AIM Icons if you so wish.

The film’s Facebook page opens by showing a bunch of videos that act like found footage in a way that’s related to the movie. So there’s a couple taking video of themselves driving down the highway who encounter the aliens suddenly and are caught up. The offer is there to “Like” the page so you can share your own videos, but I’m not sure how that works. There’s also a “Check-In” tab that allowed you to check in as having watched the movie using GetGlue and add a comment about having done so. There are also plenty of photos and videos and the other updates that are common to these pages.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

While there weren’t any promotional partners there was quite a bit of advertising done. As mentioned above, there were a half-dozen TV spots that were created and which were run in pretty heavy rotation particularly in the last weeks before release. Each used a sub-set of footage from the trailers but without, at least as far as I can tell, anything new. But this set of commercials worked in and of themselves and do a good job of selling the movie to the public as, actually, a pretty standard alien invasion movie.

Media and Publicity

Before Comic-Con 2010 it was a movie no one had really heard of. But after a panel presentation there that showed the trailer and some footage there, enough that it wound up on everyone’s lips and came out as one of the most-anticipated films to make an appearance there. All of that without, apparently, a distributor yet since it was made outside the studio system and completely independently.

A lot of the publicity, which there actually wasn’t a ton of, focused on the technical development of the movie and is exemplified by this profile (Los Angeles Times, 11/5/10) that had them talking about how they tried to do something a little different with the sci-fi genre by creating a movie with top-shelf effects but as independent creators.

Overall

I like just about everything about this campaign. The trailers are really effective at establishing the mystery about the story and the other materials, particularly the website and posters, work to support those in making the case to the public. And while I didn’t come across a massive amount of publicity, the campaign strategies did do a good job of getting some word of mouth started and start people talking.

As I said, though, the TV campaign hits all the same notes as most any other alien invasion movie and so there’s a slight disconnect between that portion of the campaign, which doesn’t break any new ground, and the way it was presented to movie and genre fans at an event like Comic-Con as well as in the press, where it was placed squarely in the “doing something different” category. But most of the audience probably isn’t aware enough of those efforts to be put off by all that so it works well enough to probably get a good audience this weekend.

Movie Marketing Madness: Due Date

We all have our share of travel horror stories. Whether they involve being on a plane next to a baby who won’t stop crying between New York and Los Angeles or spending the night on the floor of both Newark International and Dulles International airports, odds are if you travel enough in any way, shape or form you’ll have some sort of experience you just can’t believe is happening in this day and age. And while delays when you’re going *to* wherever it is you’re heading are bad enough, they take on an additional level of heinousness when you’re trying to go *back* and return to your loved ones.

Due Date, the new movie from director Todd Phillips, is about one man doing just that: Crawling through hell to get back to his wife. When Peter (Robert Downey Jr.) finds himself on a no-fly-list his attempts to get home in time to see his wife deliver their first baby he’s left in a tough spot. But Ethan (Zach Galifianakis), a guy he met before he was kicked off the plane, and his rental car may just be the solution he needs. Unfortunately things do not go as smoothly as Peter hoped for as they encounter one obstacle after another on the road, with the two alternatively hating each other and relying on each other to get just a few more miles down the road.

There are obvious similarities to Planes, Trains and Automobiles, the classic Steve Martin/John Candy flick from the mid-80s. But it’s a new era and there are new comedic sensibilities in play so let’s try to put that out of our minds and look at how the studio is selling this movie to this audience.

The Posters

The poster for the movie certainly gets to the point when it comes to putting the relationship between the two main characters on display. Downey Jr. is standing there looking very disheveled and more than a little annoyed – probably having something to do at least in part with his broken arm – while Galifianakis looks like he’s having the time of his life standing there in some sort of ridiculous scarf while holding his precious dog.

When it comes to the credits Philips is noted as the director of Old School and The Hangover, certainly his two most memorable films to date.

There’s nothing about the story that’s hinted at or stated here. It’s all about playing off the potential drawing power of the two stars and hoping that audiences find the idea of Downey Jr. and his easy charm and Galifianakis and his knack for playing ridiculous characters with complete believability alluring without needing to know what the actual storyline is.

Four character posters were later created and released, each featuring a key character from the movie. So Galifianakis and Downey Jr. each get one, as does the dog and the can that contains the ashes of Galifianakis’ character’s father. Along with the photo is a quote from the movie either from them or about them.

There was also a series of four images that were combined into one poster/banner, each one depicting a stage of the travel the two characters are engaged in. They’re all familiar shots taken from the trailers and show where in terms of miles to go that action is taking place.

The Trailers

The first trailer starts out with Downey Jr. sharing a heart-wrenching story about how his dad left him and his mother when he was a young child, a story that Galifianakis simply laughs at while saying his own loving father would never have done that. So it immediately shows how the relationship between these two will be enormously dysfunctional, with one being incredibly serious and the other being incredibly clueless.

It basically presents the movie as a buddy comedy, with the two getting in to one outrageous situation – Galifianakis shoots Downey Jr. in the leg, they drive off a bridge etc – after another. So it’s one reacting to the other at any given time. What’s cool to see is that Downey Jr., while appearing to play it straight, holds his own against Galifianakis as a source of comedy that goes beyond just reacting to his antics.

The second trailer makes more of an effort to show off the movie’s story. So we get shots of the phone call between Downey Jr. and his wife about her having a baby shortly, shots that are juxtaposed with a scene of him being told he’s on the Do Not Fly List, which explains to the audience why he’s not taking the fastest and easiest mode of transportation.

Everything else here is just additional humor, with more great shots of Galifianakis and Downey Jr. riffing off of each other. Downey Jr. plays it so believably straight and Galifianakis is such a destructive force of nature that they compliment each other incredibly well without the relationship ever appearing to be cliched or anything like that. It’s a nice mix of story elements and gags, which is likely a good representation of the movie itself.

Online

The movie’s official website opens with the second trailer and then makes most of its content extremely hard to find. There’s a tiny little “Menu” button at the very top of the screen that you won’t see unless you’re looking for it. Instead the main real estate of the opening page is devoted to a handful of things for the visitor to do. That includes a “Driving Game” that lets you test your vehicle handling skills, a “Trembely Yourself” photo uploading tool, a link to the “Disaster Meter” Facebook app and an invitation to “Meet Sonny” is you’d like more information about the dog that accompanies our main characters on their journey.

After you move past all that, the first section of content under that almost-hidden menu is “About,” which contains a pretty good Synopsis as well as Cast and Filmmaker information and biographies (Galifianakis was on “Boston Common”?) and some downloadable Production Notes.

The “Videos” section just has the two trailers while the “Gallery” has about two dozen stills, including a few behind the scenes shots showing Phillips and his two actors on the set.

You’ll find the whole compliment of Posters as well as the usual array of Wallpapers, Buddy Icons and a Screensaver under “Downloads.”

The “Soundtrack” has samples of the songs on that album as well as a link to buy the tunes from Amazon.com and “Sweepstakes” has links to outside sites that were running giveaways or other promotions in conjunction with the movie.

That menu bar is then rounded out with the same group of more entertaining options as were found on the front page.

Links at the bottom of the page take you to the movie’s Facebook page or the general WB Twitter profile, which is a far better strategy than having a movie-specific feed. The Facebook page has updates on new TV spots and when new features have been added to the website as well as incentives to click over to that site and the usual batch of photos and other information.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions

At least four TV spots were created for the movie, all of which were quite funny. Most of them at least started off – although they all used different scenes to do this – with the setup of Downey Jr. needing to get cross-country to be with his wife. But then they digressed into the antics that he gets into with Galifianakis. Again, all of them use slightly different arrangements of scenes to portray the insanity and there’s about 25 percent new footage in the collection, the rest being pulled from throughout the trailers. They present the movie as a comedy with lots of craziness but also a good relationship foundation, especial between the two leads.

The studio partnered with location-based check-in service Whrrl for a promotion (ClickZ, 10/27/10)  in conjunction with the Murphy’s gas station chain. When a Whrrl user checks in at a Murphy’s location they can win movie tickets, concession coupons, free gas or free merchandise from Murphy’s.

Media and Publicity

I’m kind of shocked, actually, by the lack of major press coverage for this movie. There have been the usual rounds by Galifianakis and Downey Jr. to the talk shows and a few profiles of the actors, but nothing in the way of major stories. The movie seems to be getting lost in that regard amidst the coverage of other movies from Galifianakis and Phillips (the shooting of The Hangover 2 and all the hand-wringing over Mel Gibson’s disappearance from that production) and Downey Jr. (the beginning of shooting of Sherlock Holmes 2). That’s a bit unfortunate since it means that, despite the constant barrage of advertising, the movie isn’t really being allowed to find its voice.

Overall

Again, I’m a little shocked by the lack of press that seems to have been generated for the movie, at least press that wasn’t tied primarily to another film from the actors or directors that just so happened to mention this particular movie. These are two of the biggest stars of the moment and one of the funniest directors of the last 10 years or so and therefore I would have expected a much bigger press effort.

The advertising for the movie in the form of TV spots does make up for that in some way since it’s going to reach a mass audience that may have missed the press coverage, though. And just based on the quality of the material – including the trailers and posters – that was released it’s easy to see this movie reaching an audience that wasn’t so much interested in the horror and scares that have been dominating the box office recently but isn’t quite ready for the heavy nature of the awards-season releases. The series of posters work almost as well as the trailers in telling the story, something that’s pretty rare.

PICKING UP THE SPARE

• 11/03/10 – Galifianakis gets profiled more extensively by the LAT in a piece that explores what he thinks is funny and his now officially frequent collaborations with director Phillips.
• 11/03/10 – While the story doesn’t mention the movie tie-in, the partnership between Murphy’s gas stations and Whrrl has some very positive statistics to show.