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Movie Marketing Madness by Chris Thilk is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at MMM.
Getting a post Comic-Con bump
On the one hand some news from Flixster (via THR’s Heat Vision) that Comic-Con has not been, for the vast majority of movies, been a huge word-of-mouth generator isn’t that surprising.
But when you look at what the research seems to have been looking at the sensational headline seems a little less accurate. The chart says it’s tracking “iPhone Searches” and comparing them from one week to the next. That’s a pretty small subset of the general online buzz.
It makes sense that movies like Sucker Punch, which really made a big splash and came out of Comic-Con as a one with surprisingly good buzz, would see such a huge jump. But in this case the baseline is pretty much zero. People knew about the movie but the appearance at the convention coincided with the release of a trailer and some posters and a ton of conversations were generated as a result.
Scott Pilgrim’s Comic-Con bump wasn’t nearly as big because that marketing campaign is almost over and there wasn’t anything new or revelatory which debuted there. Yes, the movie was sneaked to some of the press in attendance but overall the buzz wasn’t nearly as voluminous as it was for, say, The Avengers. At least not based on what I was seeing.
While there were cool props for Captain America, Thor and other movies on display at the convention there weren’t any trailers actually released, nor were there any huge casting announcements. Same for Megamind, which had a panel talk but nothing really new. The news around these movies was more part of the overall press strategy, a strategy that will have longer-term implications beyond a single weekend of iPhone searches.
It’s always good to measure results, but this seems like an odd metric to pull out. I’m positive the number of conversations as defined by tweets, blog posts and such were up for all these movies over the previous weekend so assuming the studios behind these movies are looking at the details they’re probably not sweating this too much. Far worse for the movies are stories that use questionable data to cast a bad light on those movies.
Expendable nostalgia
Aris at AdAge has a great editorial (8/4/10) on the use of nostalgia in movie marketing campaigns, specifically using the push for The Expendables as a hook to hang his thinking on. But he also looks at how the drive to tap in to nostalgic feelings in the audience is not only influencing the marketing but also the movie-greenlighting process as a whole.
I think Aris’ biggest and best point isn’t that The Expendables isn’t a remake of the 1980′s as movies like A-Team, Transformers and more have been. It’s a movie that appears to have been made in 1986 and dropped through a wormhole to 2010, complete with a cast that is largely filled with action movie heroes from that decade though with a few new guys mixed in for good measure.
The marketing presents a movie that’s irony free, with a healthy dose of kicking your ass in place of a tongue in cheek. Where The A-Team and other movies have offered sort of winking and self-aware versions of franchises we can’t believe we used to watch, The Expendables is a straight-forward reliving of the kinds of movies that were all about body count, the kind that comes as the result of lots and lots of irony-free explosions.
Interestingly I’m not that interested in The Expendables precisely because it seems like the kind of movie I wouldn’t be interested in 25 years ago. So while I admire the campaign – especially the word of mouth effort that Aris rightly points Stallone being at the forefront of – it doesn’t work for me precisely because it plays it completely straight.
Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-08-08
- Today needs a narrator. I'm thinking Wallace Shawn. #
- Very much about to lose my calm, cool exterior. #
- Sorry, but if *that* is what it takes to be taken seriously, I'll happily stay over here on the fringe. It's where real work gets done. #
- @scottEweinberg: Will be shortly. @ryanlack: I'm like the Yoda of verbose passive aggressiveness on Twitter. in reply to scottEweinberg #
- @scottEweinberg Patrick Wilson is making his "No, I can't believe Watchmen actually happened either" face. in reply to scottEweinberg #
- @kirk13 No lie – Half my desire to see The Other Guys is to see Keaton. "Pick another bird, Gary." in reply to kirk13 #
- So Tuesday was a pain in the neck but Wednesday, I'm going to come at you like a spider-monkey. #
- @extraface Yep, but from the band's transitional period with Ricky Bobby as lead singer. in reply to extraface #
- @jratlee The idea of tweet cliffs notes makes me really sad for some reason. (CC @tombiro @katefinn) in reply to jratlee #
- @jratlee I like where your head's at, JRL. I'll make sure you have my current address for when the checks start rolling in. in reply to jratlee #
- @jpolk122907 Nice. Did you fist-bump him and say "shake and bake"? in reply to jpolk122907 #
- RT @WatchDotTV: New blog post: Catch the Best of .tv – http://bit.ly/cizbG1 #client #
- RT @arisgeorgiadis: Talking about The Expendables here: http://bit.ly/9uydlp #
- Sometimes the search traffic to MMM is the biggest provider of laughs in my day. #
- Let's get silly. #
- Rediscovered the joys of reading the print Chi Tribune last week. Know what? It's a great newspaper. (cc @coloneltribune) #
- RT @pizzahut: Want to be the Mayor of Pizza Hut? Starting 8/10 we are rewarding the @Foursquare Mayor of each location! http://bit.ly/9F28c0 #
- @LindsMes313 You're such a rebel. in reply to LindsMes313 #
- RT @googlepubpolicy: @NYTimes is wrong. We've not had any convos with VZN about paying for carriage. We remain committed to open internet. #
- RT @hyku: Nice, 3 Voce clients @Disneyparks @PlayStation @ebayinkblog in this article: 15 Excellent Corporate Blogs: http://bit.ly/bhymDI #
- @scottEweinberg HA! I actually was using the "record needle scratching" sound effect in my head for that story. in reply to scottEweinberg #
- Just been skimming the news recently. What's this about Bristol Palin breaking up with Brett Favre over Google Wave? #
- I'm not entirely sure yesterday happened. The only proof seems to be my email Sent Items folder. #
- @StacyLibby I can hear you, you know. (cc @jpolk122907) #
- I may or may not be listening to Jimmy Buffet at a ridiculously high volume. Whatever I'm doing it's working. #
- @anniemal But did you get the #pepperpants badge for the latter? Have you even signed up for PepperSquare? in reply to anniemal #
- My latest AdAge column: Is Hollywood Suffering From Clip Overload? http://bit.ly/9BUEuA #
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Rubbin’ is racin’
A while a go I was quoted in a story about music videos and their place in the movie promotional mix.
While I couldn’t find it at the time, today I came across one of my favorites, the video for “Hearts in Trouble” by Chicago, a song that appeared on the Days of Thunder soundtrack. It’s a great song (IMO) in and of itself and while the video may seem incredibly cheesy you have to keep in mind that when you compare it to the videos from 19 a couple years before this or Twenty-1 a year later this is probably the best of the lot for the band.
Regular clips, wavy clips and clips for dipping
My latest AdAge excursion is a look at how Hollywood has really amped up the use of extended clips from movies as part of their marketing campaigns.
I’d love to hear from you all – either here or in the comments section at AdAge – as to where you fall on the use of these clips for just about all movies of any size. Everything from mainstream kids fair to adult-oriented independent drams are employing this tactic. Does it work for you? Are there some kinds of movies you watch the clips for and others you don’t?
