Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull trailer to debut next week : Movie Marketing Madness

Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull trailer to debut next week

Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under Movie Marketing, Paramount Pictures, Trailers |

indyskullteaserposter.jpgAccording to Marc Graser at Variety, Paramount will debut the first trailer for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull next week on Valentine’s Day. The trailer will be attached to the studio’s The Spiderwick Chronicles and then hit the Internet shortly thereafter.

The release of the trailer is only the second entry into the movie’s formal marketing campaign, with the only previous element being the poster that debuted a while ago. Most of the campaign to date has been made up of photos from the movie that have been released either in print or online along with the set videos that have shown up on the movie’s official site.

I have to agree with the thinking at Paramount and in director Steven Spielberg’s camp that there’s been no pressing need for a rushed trailer or anything else. The movie, as they say, is already on just about everyone’s radar so doing things just for the sake of doing them isn’t really necessary. It will compete with the other tentpole releases on its own terms.

Plus, the push for the movie will be made up largely of public relations elements. Why throw good money after bad on marketing efforts when every entertainment magazine editor will be lining up at Paramount’s door to do whatever is necessary to secure exclusives with the cast and crew. We’ve already seen that with the Vanity Fair spread on the movie and that’s not even the tip of the iceberg.

The placement of the trailer is also telling of how pervasive Paramount thinks awareness is of the movie in the 30 and over crowd. They’re the ones that are more or less already locked into seeing it - they’ve got May 22nd already circled on their calendars (or maybe that’s just me) - so putting teh spot in front of Spiderwick, which is going to bring in kids (hopefully) means the studio is, in fact, going to make an attempt to bring in younger viewers.

Specifically they’re hoping that the parents who take their kids to Spiderwick will get excited, associate that warm fuzzy with being with their kids at a movie and then make the mental leap to wanting those kids to have the same sort of Indy-generated theater excitement they remember from their own younger years.

The only problem is the strategy of once again staggering the theatrical debut of the trailer and its appearance online. Paramount is pretty much resigning itself to once again dealing with cellphone-recorded video of the trailer showing up on YouTube and then tasking their lawyers with sending out hundred’s of cease-and-desist emails telling bloggers to take it off their sites. I know that they’re trying to drive people to Spiderwick, but let’s be honest - that tactic is so ineffective in this day and age it’s almost laughable.

Put the trailer online at the same time the first Spiderwick showing in the country begins on the official site. Make it downloadable so people can snag a high-res version and use that to upload to YouTube. Or put it there at the same time themselves. Basically stop acting like it’s 1998 and this is Meet Joe Black. The media world is vastly different and audience expectations have changed dramatically since then, when hordes of fanboys paid for the movie just to see the first trailer for The Phantom Menace.

All that being said, I can’t wait to see this. I may have to go change my armor.

Comments

One Response to “Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull trailer to debut next week”

  1. STROOPEWAFFELS on February 10th, 2008 6:18 am

    I have been really curious about tis movie since they announced it as going to be made,,
    I can not wait to see this movie,,,

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