2007 April : Movie Marketing Madness

Quick Takes 4/30/07

The more I look at the Jessica Alba character poster for Fantastic Four 2 the more I’m inclined to agree that it was seriously doctored. She looks like Eddie Murphy when he did that “what it’s like to be white” skit on SNL.
Seems members of the film Academy will be getting a survey from an [...]

Columns and projects

Just a quick note to loyal MMM readers. I know that I just got back into writing full columns for the last couple weeks and then went this week without one. That’s largely for two reasons.
One: I’m shoulder deep in a column for Spider-Man 3 that’s coming in at six Word pages already (and I [...]

Quick Takes 4/27/07

Lion’s Gate is one of the major advertisers getting in on the ground floor of internet TV venture Joost.
Apparently Jeffery Katzenberg and Antonio Banderas made asses of themselves promoting Shrek the Third with a weirdly awkward appearance on “American Idol.”
Clayton has a great post up on how marketing needs to set expectations correctly in order [...]

Next heavily promoted on TBS late-night

While watching The Fugitive on TBS’s “Movie Extras” last night I noticed quite a bit of advertising and promotion for the Nicolas Cage/Julianne Moore flick Next.
Not only were there a number of straight commercials for the movie but there was also a mini behind-the-scenes special. Not much, just a few interviews with the cast a [...]

Schafer spells it out

Ethics in online marketing is always a fun topic to discuss. There are some who feel it’s perfectly fine to anonymously post messages on message boards, blog comments or other venue. There are others (the good guys) who feel that it’s more important to be open and honest about who you are online and what [...]

Quick Takes 4/26/07

Argh.

Hey, guess what? There are a ton of movies coming out this summer and many of them are sequels or franchise extensions in some manner.
But with all those big name flicks taking up theater space (and advertising time) it’s important to remember the smaller niche films are every bit (in some cases more) worth your [...]

Online ad round-up

James has put up a number of online ads for movies in the last day or so. Check out banners for Georgia Rule, Hot Fuzz and Next.

Dude, not cool

The AP stole my blog name!
Meanwhile, he’s enjoying the accomplishment of finishing a six-year project. He celebrated with some time off before jumping into the movie’s marketing madness…
Just kidding, of course. Still…

Golden Compass site update

New Line has added a bunch of new features to the official website for The Golden Compass. It’s a very nicely laid out site, and one of the more fun new features is “Meet Your Daemon” which asks you a bunch of questions to find out what kind of soul avatar you would have. Check [...]

Yahoo promotes Tribeca Film Festival

Yahoo has launched a dedicated microsite for the Tribeca Film Festival according to MediaWeek. The site is designed to be an information repository for the festival and brings with it several of Yahoo’s Web 2.0 features.

PointRoll partners with Aura Group for rich media/mobile connections

Rich media ad firm PointRoll is partnering with wireless technology firm Aura Group for a service that allows movie advertisers to connect with mobile device users.
The service, dubbed PointRoll MovieConnect,  works by PointRoll ads allowing, when moused-over, people to enter their mobile number in order to receive showtimes and such on their phones. Those numbers [...]

Quick Takes 4/25/07

Nike has produced a half-size shoe that transforms into Optimus Prime. Not sure how I feel about this.
PlayStation 2 owners will soon be able to buy a Mr. Bean game for the console.
Slashfilm reports that 70 percent of what’s in the theatrical trailer for The Simpsons is not in the finished movie.
There are a couple [...]

Ratatouille TV ad correction

In a previous post I got the date of when Disney is running and all-day campaign for Ratatouille. I originally said it was 4/9 (about two and half weeks ago) - it’s actually 5/1. Sorry for the error.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix trailer

Not my cup of tea but I’ll let the franchise’s fans judge this new trailer for themselves.
[youtube]YVug1e9H_Vk[/youtube]

AdAge reports on its own in-theater marketing seminar

The extent to which some people don’t get it is sometimes just plain astounding.
Case in point, this report on AdAge’s Marquee Marketing at the Movies Conference (previous post on this). There’s lots of fluffy predictions and such from the attendees but there’s also a dramatic disconnect between two things that happened there.
First of all, National [...]

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