Five Cool Things About Prometheus Marketing

1. Ridley Scott returns to science fiction
Ah, the prodigal son returns. God bless Ridley Scott and his many incarnations - one involving a story of the Crusades as the West went off to war in Central Asia and modern day Babylon - but it is in his role as a master of science fiction in which he can do no wrong. From the infamous Apple 1984 commercial, where he cut his chops creating arresting video, to Alien, where Scott once and for all proved his geek bona fides as a master of the genre.

2. Who is Sir Peter Weyland?
Forget Howard Roark, Ayn Rand's cartoonish Creator. Weyland, the founder of the Weyland Corporation, which caused so much trouble in the Alien films, has always been a bit of a mystery. Is Sir Peter a bit of a Sir Ridley, and vice versa? Both, clearly, have been fascinated by mythology and by science. Sir Peter, according to his fictional TED Talks biography, is the son of an Oxford educated Professor of Comparative Mythology and a self-taught software engineer. And Sir Ridley, like Stanley Kubrick, seems obsessed by the intersect between science and art, between artificial and artistic intelligence.

3. The Weyland Corporation
With a 218 trillion dollar valuation, the shadowy Weyland Corporation's ambitions are more than international in scope - they are, indeed, galactic. "There are other worlds than this one," Sir Peter boldly declared, "And if there is no air to breathe, we will simply have to make it." Hello?
The company's website is just masterful, the stuff that social media geek conversation is made of. There is actually an Investor Information page on the site, the sort one would find on any corporation website, only this one has fictional - but fascinating - charts ("Weyland Employee Satisfaction Rate") as well as graphs of data that, no doubt, added value to the whole "Prometheus" experience. It only heightens the excitement.
Hello? If Weyland Corporation had a fictional LinkedIn account, how many would apply? Which brings us to...

4. The viral marketing strategy
They had me at the fictional TED talk, given in 2023. It was, of course, an instant social media success - to date over 6,000 retweets and over 21,000 Facebook likes. There were also viral movie poster. This viral video campaign has been studiously calculated to tickle the g-spot of every tech geek, every aficionado of science fiction practiced at the highest levels. Sir Scott is best when he allows his creativity full reign, creating whole worlds out of thin air.

5. The stars
Nooni Rapace, Michael Fassbender and, of course, Sir Ridley. I. Was. So. There.

Credit to IFC Fix for this post

Prometheus - When Movie Marketing Goes Very Right

Any major studio film these days is going to have a marketing campaign that includes some kind of online element. Often that means a trailer. Sometimes film clips are thrown in there too. But what every studio exec would really like is something about the film that goes viral - that has people passing it on to friends. With Prometheus, the upcoming film from director Ridley Scott, Fox has scored a major viral victory.
First there was the TED talk from the future. The short video shows Guy Pierce as fictional Weyland Industries head Peter Weyland, giving a TED talk in 2023. The piece was first screened at the real TED conference in February. According to the LA Times, TED organisers helped to make the film look like what they envision a talk will really be like in the future. (Look at previous post for the video).
Now Fox has released a second video. This one is about David, a robot who understands human emotions that he does not feel, and who is creepily life like. Actor Michael Fassbender who plays David in this short made to look like a corporate video about a cool new product.



The latest video is almost a little movie into itself. We learn a lot about David and the world he lives and works in and the video is just incredibly entertaining.
On top of all that there's this Website for Weyland Industries. The movie promo site could easily be mistaken for an actual corporate website. My favourite bit is the "about" section. It includes the standard corporate information like number of employees: 837.53 million. Secondary locations: 160 countries and 63 colonies. There's a corporate time line that includes facts such as in 2042 Weyland Industries donated $5 billion to Little Explorers, a charity "dedicated to the education of troubled middle school students."
There are several reasons this marketing is proving to be so effective. The movie (which is likely a prequel to Scott's Alien) has been shrouded in mystery. Sci-fi fans have been chomping at the bit to get any information they can about the film's plot. The current marketing campaign provides lots of tasty tidbits.
The promos are also good enough to pull in movie lovers who have never seen Alien. This summer is going to be crowded. Prometheus will be up against a new Spider-Man, The Dark Knight Rises and The Avengers. Those franchise films are based on well-known heroes. Prometheus doesn't have that advantage so the film makers (and the studio) have had to be smarter about their marketing. Mystery + well done promos = marketing gold.
Will it help at the box office? That remains to be seen. The film hits theatres June 8th.

Credit to forbes.com twitter - DorothyatForbes

Peter Weyland TED Talk 2023 - Viral Marketing

The Other Guys: Motion Poster

Promotion/Marketing for The Other Guys

In July 2010, both Wahlberg and Ferrell appeared at the San Diego Comic-Con International to promote their film.

During an episode of Big Brother, the house guests competed in a luxury challenge to see an advance screening of the film. Although they weren't actually in the house, both Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg made an on-screen video appearance.

During the August 4th, 2010 episode of America's Got Talent, the week's contestants saw an advance screening of the film and got to meet both Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg.

Ferrell and Wahlberg also made a cameo appearance on an episode of WWE Raw to promote the film.

During the week leading up to the release date, the film was promoted on TruTV programmes, specifically The Smoking Gun Presents: World's Dumbest... During the segments were shown during the commercial breaks of the show's cast broken down on a highway, discussing several movies, as part of a promotional tie-in; with The Other Guys being one of them.

They appeared in on screen advertising on broadcast sports events such as MLB and NASCAR. 

Premiere
Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, hot off Wahlberg's ceremony awarding him a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame, turned up at New York's Ziegfeld Theatre on Monday 30th July for the premiere of "The Other Guys," joining costars Eva Mendes, Samuel L. Jackson and others on a "red carpet" styled to look like police tape.

The after party was held at the Park restaurant in Manhattan.
Other cast members on hand included Steve Coogan, Rob Riggle, Horatio Sanz, Lindsay Sloane, Tess Kartel, Ray Stevenson and Brooke Shields, who appears in the movie as herself. Writer Chris Hency made the scene, as did director Adam McKay. Jackson brought wife LaTanya Richardson, and Ferrell had wife Viveca Paulin as his date.

Ice-T and Coco made it safely into town for the event, joining the likes of Star Jones, Jimmy Fallon, Damon Wayans Jr. and Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas.

Credit to the Los Angeles Times.

The premiere of the new Hollywood film The Other Guys has been promoted using replica NYPD cars featuring vehicle graphics produced by Signs Express Bristol.

The south-west franchise, which provides a range of vehicle marking services as well as general signage, was commissioned to create two full vehicle wraps for the film.

"The cars were yellow taxis when we received them so we set about wrapping the entire body in white and then applying the replica police graphics," explains Jon Miller-Wilson, franchisee for Signs Express Bristol. "It's created a fantastic stage backdrop for the film premiere."

Kick-Ass Marketing Madness

The Posters
With such a colorful cast of characters there were bound to be a plethora of posters created and the marketing team has certainly delivered on that front.
The first batch of teasers placed each of the main characters – Red Mist, Kick-Ass himself, Hit Girl and Big Daddy – in that most cliched of super-hero poses, that of standing atop a building and looking over the city they’ve sworn to protect triumphantly and with a sense of entitlement and ownership. When you put the four posters together in the order outlined above the title of the movie is spelled out in the sky, which is a nice touch and certainly an incentive for collectors excited about the movie to seek out the one-sheets and webmasters to reprint this group excitedly.

A second batch of teaser one-sheets again featured each individual character, but in different poses and with more color-coded backgrounds. Each one also got it’s own little saying that deflated the idea they were actually had any powers but did emphasize what they could do, which is kick your ass. So Kick Ass’ poster says “I can’t fly. But I can kick your ass.” and so on. Each also contained a URL to what appeared to be a character-specific website but those addresses, when entered, just redirected to the movie’s official site.
While three series of character-centric posters for a movie with only four main characters it’s showing off might seem excessive, it did serve the purpose of creating a steady stream of publicity on movie blogs and elsewhere. That kept the movie in the audience’s mind and kept them talking about between filming and the release.
A theatrical poster took the same visual style as the last of the teaser series, with the bold, block letter title treatment in the background and the four characters standing in the front and above the little bit of non-credit block copy on the poster that states definitively “Shut up. Kick ass.” It certainly looks like the kind of image that might be created for a comic trade paperback and is pretty cool, finishing off the poster component of the campaign nicely.

The Trailers
The first all ages trailer starts off with a shot of a winged hero standing atop a building ready to take flight. As he prepares we get voiceover asking why no one has thought of being a super-hero before since their lives can’t be so interesting as to not need a little adventure mixed in. When the winged figure takes off he plummets straight down, eventually landing with a deadly thud on top of a taxi as the voiceover informs us that’s not him, that’s some dude with mental problems.
After a brief shot of the main character and his friends discussing whether or not becoming a hero is possible we get a “putting on the costume” scene we’re then shown quickly the other everyday heroes before we finally get the “I’m Kick Ass” scene.
The second trailer starts off with the friends discussing how probable it is that anyone who tried to be a super hero would wind up seriously injured very shortly but then provides a little more background into the guy who would be Kick Ass before showing him suiting up. That initial appearance, we’re told via news footage, inspires others to take up similar mantles and so we’re introduced more fully to Big Daddy, Hit Girl and Red Mist as they seek to fight crime on their own terms. We also get a better idea of what they’re going up against as we see a crime leader of some sort (played by Mark Strong) and what his reaction to the rise of costumed vigilantes is and what sort of havoc they’re playing with his operations.
A third and much shorter trailer really served as a greatest hits compilation of the ones that had come before. I don’t think there’s any new footage in there but it does introduce all four characters once again and get to the idea that these are just ordinary people who have decided to take the law into their own hands. Or at least that they’ve decided to stop allowing innocent people to take a beating without doing anything.
Because the movie was rated R and it was doing so well in establishing its hard core cred, a red-band trailer was also introduced that included more language and mentions of the primary hero’s masturbatory tendencies. It also contained a few more graphic shots of the backs of people’s heads being blown off. Some of that language would come out of the mouth of the young girl who plays Hit Girl, which would result in some hand-wringing by media and other critics that we’ll talk more about later on.

Online
When you load the official website the primary menu shows briefly before giving way to the trailer, which you can also share on a variety of social networks or embed on your own blog. Closing that you’ll see the main page has prompts to Buy Tickets Now as well as a list of theaters showing sneak peeks which seems to be generated based on the location of your computer’s IP address. So when I visited I got a list of theaters in the western suburbs of Chicago. There are also links to read reviews on IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, which is somewhat unusual and shows what faith the marketers are putting in word of mouth peer reviews.
When you enter the site the first thing you’re prompted to do is play some light games, which if you register will get you points you can redeem later on. Each character icon brings you to a different game that’s associated with that character’s skills in the story.
Moving to the site’s content menu, “About” has a decent paragraph write-up of the film’s story and characters. The “Cast and Crew” section is one of the best-designed such executions I think I’ve seen with its big icons for each actor that leads you to information on their background and biography.
There are 12 stills from the movie in “Photos” and “Videos” contains the Teaser and Theatrical Trailers as well as a handful of clips from the movie that extend scenes that are teased in the trailers. “Downloads” has four character-centric Wallpapers and Icons that use the same images from one of the teaser poster series.
The “Restricted” section contains direct links to things like Watch Hardcore Videos (the restricted trailer) and an Adults Only Soundboard as well as more that prompts you to take various actions with foul-mouthed language, including a call to grab an embeddable widget, something I haven’t seen in a while.
“Partners” has links to the content hubs at sites like IGN and UGO as well as information on buying movie-branded goods by French Connection and Vans. There are also links to the Lionsgate YouTube channel and information on the film’s soundtrack.
The “News” section has photos from the movie’s screening at SXSW, a music video from Mika and photos from the UK premiere. There are also embedded updates from the studio’s Twitter feed and when you click “See All Updates” you’re taken to that profile.
Finally the “Store” lets you buy movie t-shirts and other goodies from Gold Label.
Each character also got their own Facebook page, something that must have cost the studio a healthy sum considering Facebook’s policies on making sure you are who you say you are on the network. When you visited the pages for Kick Ass, Red Mist, Big Daddy or Hit Girl you were prompted to both enter a sweepstakes to win a trip to the premiere or enter a contest by uploading video of you in your super-hero costume and showing off your moves. Each character’s page also had plenty of information about that particular character as well as links ot the other’s profiles, the official site, links to the Demand It campaign and a Wall’s worth of links to coverage of new marketing materials and more about the movie.
The movie’s MySpace page had the trailers, some clips and links to the same contests and sweepstakes mentioned before.
There was a sited called Real Life Superheroes that was kind of…weird. It’s obviously part of the campaign for the movie – banner ads for the flick are all over the place – but it also seems to exist in a world of such characters, encouraging people to create profiles for their own heroes.
The Lionsgate YouTube channel was retro-fitted to be a hub for people to submit their own video review after seeing the movie. The main channel page also contained a stream of commentary about the movie from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, a stream powered by a service called @ThisMoment, integration it and the movie got a bit of press out of. Likewise the studio’s Twitter channel contained steady updates on the movie’s publicity and links to what it felt was important commentary.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions
A ton of advertising has been done, including the creation of quite a few TV spots, many of which took the form of trimmed trailers and featured little new material. Still, they’re effective at conveying the overall attitude of the movie to an audience, though there’s the concern that without the additional time that can be used for more explanation there’s going to be the belief that this is a straight super-hero movie. The expanded trailers make it more clear that it’s taking a drastically different approach to the genre but that doesn’t come through as loudly in 30-second spots.
There has been a good amount of outdoor advertising as well as well as some online and, one would assume, in print. Most of that as would be expected has repurposed any of the poster campaign’s art.

Media and Publicity
After an early appearance at Butt-Numb-a-Thon, the movie had it’s official coming out party with a screening on opening night of SXSW 2010. In fact the movie’s presence there included a number of vans to shuttle people around that were decorated with key art elements, which is kind of cool since transportation at festivals is always an issue.
In terms of media coverage a good amount came after the release of some restricted clips that featured foul language, some of which came out of the mouth of young Chloe Grace Moretz, the girl who plays Hit Girl. That led to a lot of commentary about not only whether red-band trailers are appropriate given their propensity to appear on non-age restricted sites (New York Times, 2/24/10) but also on the the fact that an 11 year old girl was saying such things, including lots of references to sexual themes. That focus on Moretz and her role in such a graphic, both verbally and physically, movie continued to be covered in the press (New York Times, 4/11/10) and actually became a central component of a lot of stories (Los Angeles Times, 4/14/10) even those stories that were just about how offensive and incendiary the movie is in general, as well as leading to discussions of gender politics and related issues.
Regardless of what traditional mainstream or trade press coverage the movie has gotten, the real thing going for Kick-Ass is the word of mouth that has been building up for well on a year now. Fans have been absolutely salivating for this movie and have eaten up every new clip, every new trailer, every new preview at a festival or convention. And that campaign has fed that hunger with a steady release of material that has kept the movie never far from top-of-mind and so fueled the conversations about it and therefore the anticipation for it. Indeed it seemed to be pegged by some as the pinnacle (Los Angeles Times, 4/15/10) of the comic/movie geek’s world. As with previous movies in this category, though, how festival and convention buzz translates to box-office success remains to be seen.