Picking up the Spare: Incredible Hulk, The Love Guru, Get Smart and WALL-E
The Incredible Hulk
David Goetzi at MediaPost reviews the effectiveness of The Incredible Hulk’s takeover of an episode of “American Gladiators.” The promotion included outfitting some of the Gladiators with Hulk Smash Hands, an appearance by former Hulk Lou Ferrigno and an extended trailer at the end of the show, all of which added up to a great, if slightly tongue-in-cheek bit of marketing for the movie.
To promote the movie’s opening in Spain, ol’ greenskin took over the front page of MSN Spain with a full rich-media placement on June 20th only that included scenes from the movie in the background and a full trailer that played on the page.
You can also see at Newsarama an example of the “If you liked the movie, you’ll love the comics” ads Marvel was running for the Hulk character online around the movie’s release.
The Love Guru
Make sure to have your pop-up blocker off when you try to play Sitar Star, a riff off the uber-popular Guitar Hero that lets you try to pluck out a tune on a sitar. It’s kind of hard to play, but I’m not sure if that’s just because I’ve never played Guitar Hero and so am not all that familiar with the moves.
Tag Games and Player X are developing a mobile game based on the movie that will challenge people’s ability to pass on bits of enlightenment.
Anne Thompson details how Myers is not the best loved person in Hollywood, something that’s sparked a bit of a PR backlash whenever he has a new movie coming out.
Get Smart
Variety has a good story about the generational awareness gap that exists for the Get Smart franchise and how Warner Bros. tried to bridge that, attempting a campaign – and movie – that would appeal to both longtime fans and younger audiences without the existing knowledge of the old series.
I forgot about this when writing the column, but Warner Bros. is releasing a direct-to-video movie featuring Bruce and Lloyd, the two techies who keep Control in gadgets, called Bruce & Lloyd: Out of Control. Her’s the synopsis: Get extra spy-spoof hilarity when Get Smart’s bungling inventors Bruce and Lloyd stumble into their own comedy adventure in a zany story. The R&D smarties are out of the lab and way out of their comfort zones as the scramble to find a nifty new invention they’ve somehow lost.
Adweek has a feature on the efforts by David Brown Entertainment to come up with something interesting and relevant for Sierra Mist’s cross-promotional spots for Get Smart.
WALL-E
Game maker THQ shipped the video game tie-in to the movie early to maximize its promotional impact on the theatrical release. The game largely recreates many of the key components of the movie and includes a tie-in to videos that have appeared on Disney.com.
A Twitter message from Lish Dorset tipped me off to the fact that Pixar had, in the words of Tom Biro, dropped some madd coin on a ton of gifts you could give on Facebook. The gifts, as you can see, included images from not just WALL-E but all the other Pixar movies as well.
PDF Related posts:
- Picking up the Spare: The Love Guru, X-Files, Pineapple Express and Slurpees The Love G
- Picking Up the Spare: 7/16/08 The Incred
- Picking Up the Spare: I Love You Man, Sunshine Cleaning, Monsters Vs. Aliens I Love You
- Picking up the Spare: Dark Knight, Iron Man, WALL-E The Dark K
- Picking up the Spare: WALL-E, Dark Knight and Tropic Thunder WALL-E WAL
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Additional comments powered by BackType
I’m glad the marketing for the Hulk worked out. It’s a really good ‘reboot’. Much better than the 2003 version. I’m also curious as to why Speed Racer didn’t get such a big marketing push.