Marketing movies is a unique endeavour, distinct from selling everyday products. Unlike promoting technical solutions or nutritional benefits, it involves selling a portrayal of art to consumers. This art is the director's product, sponsored by the studios funding it. A successful marketing campaign could mean success for all parties involved in developing a prominent film for theatres like Jaws and The Godfather.
Currently, marketing strategies have grown regarding how platforms have evolved to allow improved promotional content from studios and highlighted quotes from satisfied audience members. This evolution, especially in digital marketing, has paved the way for more innovative and creative transmedia marketing strategies. Transmedia marketing, which involves converging all marketing tactics to enforce a campaign, allows studios to make the most of every resource. The results of these tactics, often called creative advertising, can be a game-changer for the business, as evidenced by the high film box office scores. However, there are signs that these tactics could dilute the impact of the marketing campaigns if not carefully managed.
Two contemporary examples of transmedia marketing campaigns that have risked slightly fizzling out are Longlegs and Barbie. Typically, marketing managers overlook the earliest stages of the film's production, allowing them to get a taste of their style(Blair, 282). They would incorporate that style into the media, such as trailers and posters, to promote the movie. This incorporation could lead to insights concerning how the marketing team could illustrate the appeal of a movie's content. The insight would lead to creative advertising strategies, highlighting many methods to convince people to watch the latest release. These practical examples of the marketing plans of Longlegs and Barbie will be examined, along with their positive and negative outputs.
The aesthetic for the transmedia campaign of the horror movie Longlegs revolved around its content being shrouded in anonymity. Some of the campaign's tactics include billboards promoting cryptic messages and editing its trailers to mislead the audience. Also, there was an inclusion of a true-crime pseudo website that focuses upon a series of fictionalized killings that are the focus of Longlegs plot(Squires). These tactics create an illusionary experience for the audience, similar to the marketing and publicity strategies for The Blair Witch Project. The Blair Witch Project has also created a website to intimate a fictional case of the three young documentarians who went missing in the Maryland woods. Their website was intended to further the mythos of the Blair Witch while displaying other media content to immerse their target audience, such as interviews with family members of the missing filmmakers(Paul). This online tactic contributed to an intimation of an actual crime case to enforce the fallacy as part of the film's promotion.
If the lure of digital marketing had fooled the potential audiences for The Blair Witch Project in 1999, it was definitely for turning Longlegs into a financial hit. Today, Longlegs accumulated about $22.6 million at the box office(Lang). While how its transmedia marketing campaign borders upon the macabre and mysterious have garnered appeal, its influencers were going overboard in publicizing the film through their intentions. Posted on X on July 10, 2024, a viewer made a false post about a serial killer being arrested during a screening for Longlegs(WreckinRod). The problem was that the footage was taken in 2017, and the post's video included movie posters such as Logan and King Kong Skull Island within the theatre. This post is an attempt at word-of-mouth marketing that is inflammatory to a ridiculous degree and is in connection with promoting a film revolving around a serial killer. Based on the comments' reactions, it could foreshadow similar postings on social media platforms to instigate more outrageous responses from the comment sections.
In contrast to Longlegs, Barbie is a more lighthearted movie that capitalizes upon an existing intellectual property for its narrative. Likewise, its transmedia marketing strategy capitalized on itself by co-opting other trademarks to get new consumers to appeal to the revitalized Barbie brand. The cross-promotional use of the company's tactics of having these other brands support the Barbie name was frequently used apart from the usual promotional photographs and trailers displayed to the general consumers. This strategy resulted in "Barbiecore, " a fashion trend partnering with famous clothing brands such as Aldo and Forever 21(Canadian Broadcasting Company). If dressing up like a doll wasn't enough, Barbie's Malibu Dreamhouse was posted as a temporary home in California on Airbnb, and its posting had it described with language imbued through Ken's perspective. These options allow customers to physically infuse themselves with the apparel and location Mattel endorses for their movie to become and breathe like the titular characters. Thus, this marketing strategy creates another illusionary experience for their target audience by giving them personal involvement with the movie's aesthetic. By allowing their consumers to become Barbie and Ken in their own lives through Mattel's partnerships with other brands, the film's marketing campaign has garnered the appeal of about 93% of Generation Z adults from theatres across the globe in July 2023(Morning Consult). These statistics prove the transmedia marketing campaign's conquest in accomplishing the film's goal of generating awareness.
However, with all the brands allowed to be involved with the transmedia marketing campaign, it raises the question of whether it is going too far with extending to the audience with its marked commodities. The categories of products that are a part of the Barbie trend have expanded into saturation; they are too much of a good thing. Mattel uses oppositional brand extensions that deviate from the fashionable and
immaculate image of the girl's doll, such as Burger King and Xbox(Ford). These brand extensions make the audience aware that Mattel is developing the brand architecture to increase its finances in response to the film's generating favour before its release date. This saturation could weaken the specialty of the immersive transmedia campaign for Barbie by overindulging in mass marketing.
Looking at the methods and outcomes of these transmedia marketing campaigns, it is evident that much effort and triumph went into promoting a creative vision to the public. However, there's always the risk of spoilage due to an adverse reaction or a company's undoing, whether that would be intentional or not. It's important to remember that it can be a good sentiment to take innovative risks and commit to experimentation when promoting movies as long as there is full sight of the possible consequences in the future.
Written by Wyatt Flett
Creative Advertising Program (CAB)
Citations
Ford, Lucy. “The Barbie Merch has gone too far” GQ Conde Nast. 6, July 2023. https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/barbie-merch-marketing-too-much-now
"How the Barbie movie marketing machine tapped into a cultural zeitgeist." The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 20 July 2023, p. NA. Gale OneFile: CPI.Q, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A757837547/CPI?u=king56371&sid=bookmark-CPI&xid=ac1da a20. Accessed 16 July 2024.
Ken “Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse, Ken’s House” Airbnb. https://www.airbnb.ca/rooms/857387972692815761?source_impression_id=p3_172109 6714_P3L6Joat7O0ZI9ND
Mello-Klein, Cody. “What Made the Creepy ‘Longlegs’ has gone viral with its creepy marketing campaign but is more than just a stunt” Northeastern Global News. Northeastern University. 10 July 2024.
https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/07/10/longlegs-horror-movie-marketing/
Lang, Brent “Box Office: ‘Longlegs’ Bedevils with Phenomenal $22.6 Million Debut, “Fly Me To The Moon Struggles to Lift Off With $10 Million” Variety. 14 July 2024. https://variety.com/2024/film/news/box-office-longlegs-phenomenal-debut-fly-me-to-the- moon-struggles-despicable-me-4-1236070699/
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Rubin, Rebbecca “Inside ‘Barbie’s’ Pink Publicity Machine: How Warner Bros. Pulled Off The Marketing Campaign of The Year” Variety 23, July 2023. https://variety.com/2023/film/box-office/barbie-marketing-campaign-explained-warner-br os-1235677922/
Squires, John. “The Birthday Murder: Viral Marketing Website Launches for Longlegs” Bloody Disgusting 14, June 2024. https://bloody-disgusting.com/movie/3816385/the-birthday-murders-viral-marketing-web site-launches-for-longlegs/
WreckinRod [@WreckinRod] “Just got out of a screening of #Longlegs, but not because the movie was over”. 10 July 2024. https://x.com/WreckinRod/status/1811075858897260800
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