The Life Before Her Eyes poster

Posted by Chris

January 23, 2008

Later Update: The publicity firm asked me to take down the poster for a reason I’m still trying to determine. Will update later as things develop.

–Chris

My buddy Bill Green named his blog after the notion – at least partially grounded in fact – that brand managers are always wanting to make the logo bigger in ad designs. That demand runs counter to, at any given time, either the quality of the design or the realities of the ad placement. Sometimes it’s both.

That sprung to mind looking at the poster for The Life Before Her Eyes. The movie stars Evan Rachel Wood as a young girl who, along with a friend, survives some sort of violence at their high school. Uma Thurman plays the same character years later who is struggling to overcome her guilt over surviving as well as the fact that she never left the town she grew up in.

But the poster sells the movie as Across the Universe 2. For a movie that seems to be relentlessly downbeat, or at least is a tragic drama, this sure is a bright, trippy poster. It’s almost like someone kept seeing designs from the creative team and offered “Needs to be brighter” as a note. It’s trying to appeal to an audience looking for some sort of far out middle-of-the-road flick but is completely inconsistent with the trailer that was released recently. Major brand disconnect going on here.