Monthly Archives: April 2006

Goodbye

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It is with sadness that I have to announce I am leaving Bacon’s.  I have very much enjoyed the exchanges I have had with all of you in this space, and I will miss it.  However, I am sure that we will connect again sometime, somewhere in the blogosphere…

With my departure this Bacon’s blog will be discontinued until further notice.  Of course the numerous other informational online resources of Bacon’s will remain in place, specifically the Bacon’s website and The Navigator, the company’s weekly newsletter.

Again, thanks for all of the good conversations and keeping me inspired.

Odds & Ends: 4/28/06

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  • I keep saying I’m not going to link to these and then I see something that’s hilarious, like “C For Cookie“
  • Craig brings us “Run, Tom Run.”
  • Alan pretty effectively disects the trailer for Lake House.
  • You can listen to the full new Neil Young album “Living With War” online. Pay attention to the various blogs he has setup for this when you open the music player.
  • Two round-ups about Snakes on a Plane. One from IdeaGrove and one from Time Magazine.

Seven tips for movie marketing

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I wrote this little “Seven Secrets” column for the Los Angeles Times. Check it out.

Seven Secrets to Movie Marketing Magic – Los Angeles Times

P.S.: Tom gives me a shout-out with a great post title: “Chris Thilk thinks he’s cool because he’s in the LA Times.”

Odds & Ends: 4/24/06

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For reasons that will soon be explained (one of which is a sick child) I’m clearing out the items I have marked as “bloggable” and starting fresh. Oy.

  • In case you’ve been wondering what the billboards that just say “6-6-06” are promoting, it’s The Omen remake. It and other new releases in a variety of media are using that…ummm…unique date to market their wares.
  • Speaking of The Omen, here’s the trailer.
  • More spookiness in the form of the Lake House trailer.
  • ComingSoon has some exclusive Akeelah & the Bee TV spots.
  • AICN sneaks a peak at the early teaser poster for The Transformers.
  • You really will need to take a moment after watching this new trailer for Bandidas. Take my word for it.
  • Columbia has launched a new game playable on Blackberrys for R.V.
  • Steve Johnson at the Tribune loves him some trailer mash-ups. I could do without them for a while.
  • Arrested Development, if it were being promoted with Star Wars-type poster art.
  • Nice piece from Steve Hall on how The Weinstein Co. – specifically their agency Deep Focus – is using YouTube to promote their movies.
  • Jeffrey Wells has a look at a brief museum-type exhibit of poster art.
  • Check out both the official website and trailer for Heart of the Game.

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Dance in smarty-pants

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You Know a Lot About Blogging

You got 6/8 correct!

Your not a total blogging geek yet… give it time.

iMediaConnection: Movie Marketing and New Media

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The ease with which blogs and podcasts have given just about everyone a voice that can be distributed around the world is a bit misleading and elusive. Starting a blog is incredibly easy and inexpensive; it’s creating content and maintaining its place in the world that gets a tad tricky. That’s why companies — including movie studios — that are considering blogging need to think long and hard about it before they do so. It’s also why experts and advisers who simply use platitudes like “start a blog” and “post daily” aren’t really helping to increase the understanding of what makes blogs such a powerful communications tool; this simplistic advice benefits no one, and can actually lead some companies down the wrong path.

At their heart, that’s what blogs and podcasts are: tools. They give their creators — from the biggest company to the smallest fan — a voice in the conversation. Existing blog creators have started a conversation, so the first decisions a studio should make is if it wants to participate and what voice it’s going to use. These are hard decisions to come to, since it automatically cedes some amount of control to the audience, which can comment, link back to and otherwise opine on the content put forth there. This can be a little scary to some companies, but the potential benefits — increased exposure, the perception that the company has opened itself up — are huge, and can’t be dismissed easily.

– See more at: http://www.imediaconnection.com/article/138509/blogs-and-podcasts-a-voice-lesson#sthash.qz7ZTQ5K.dpuf

Odds and Ends: 4/18/06

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  • Film Journal has an interesting feature up on the business behind creating movie trailers.
  • The Secret Wars Reenactment Society is hilarious.
  • More YouTube fun with this video that recuts “Buffy, the Vampire Slayer” clips so it looks like the show is a wacky, “Friends”-like sitcom. (HT to bro-in-law)
  • Jeffrey Wells gets into the industry mindset that’s actually driving the new policy of not screening even the biggest of films for reviewers and journalists. Jeff knows what he’s talking about.
  • Interesting story about the movie Coming Attractions.
  • Brandon Routh as Superman appears in a new “got milk?” ad as part of the overall push for Superman Returns.
  • Focus groups are really important.
  • Mack-Daddy C adds a bit more to the earlier conversation about engaging bloggers to create buzz for a new movie. He also has a fantastic post about women rockers who use MySpace as part of their marketing efforts. That’s a definite must-read.

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Fox Searchlight hires new VP publicity

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Fox Searchlight has hired Melissa Holloway as its new vice-president of publicity. Holloway had previously been at Lionsgate.

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Odd and Ends: 4/13/06

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Bunch of cool stuff, some of it marketing, some not but all germane to the discussion going on here.

  • If you enjoyed my thoughts about branding and how it relates to the movie biz, then this post from the IABC will be right up your alley.
  • Mark Glaser does a pretty good job of putting his finger on why the movie-going experience has been losing its appeal. A mix of bad food, inconvenient locations and ambiguous details all combine to spell out the eventual demise of this particular business model.
  • Engagement marketing. Read here and learn.
  • PaidContent posts the audio from a OMMA-Hollywood panel on marketing that includes some relevant points.

Movie Marketing Madness: Scary Movie 4

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When the Zucker Brothers created The Kentucky Fried Movie all those years ago I don’t think they knew quite what they were unleashing into the world. Since it and the other ZAZ productions (the “A” coming from partner Jim Abrams) introduced what could be argued was at the time a new genre into the film world: The spoof. Up until that point there had certainly been movies that lampooned Hollywood and its excesses but there wasn’t a concentrated effort to poke fun at the films themselves by blowing them up in order to tear them down. Some of the entries in this category have been better than others. Some have been more successful than others and the two designations don’t necessarily match up.

One series that has been successful is the Scary Movie franchise. Originally launched in 2000, the original and it’s two subsequent sequels have largely been melting pots for spoofs and parodies of not only legitimate horror films such as Friday the 13th, The Exorcist, The Ring and a host of others. Even non-horror films have come in for a pummelling. All of this is wrapped around a threadbare plot that serves no purpose but to enable the writers to have a bit of fun. The latest entry is the appropriately named Scary Movie 4. It once again stars Anna Farris as Cindy Campbell, the one constant in the movies who keeps finding her life is very strange.

Posters

There were a number of teaser posters created for this entry, most of which are riffs on recent horror or thriller-type movies. This one, for instance, is a direct parody of the posters for Saw. Next is one that turns the poster for War of the Worlds into something naughty. This one, though, is just all about how funny sex dolls are. They’re all pretty funny and work well in identifying just what the movie is going to be about (horror parody that’s dripping with sexual innuendo).

The theatrical poster is just a straight continuation of the images used for the previous three films. Farris and her co-stars, which this time include Dr. Phil and Shaquille O’Neil, sit in movie theater seats and look shocked. The idea behind the poster is actually quite cool. Having the characters arranged like this is convenient for presenting just who’s in the movie, yes. But putting them in theater seating subtley winks at the “movieness” of the movie, or the meta-thinking that’s behind a movie that makes fun of other movies. It’s not a bad concept.

Trailers

The sole goal of the trailer is to show everyone the parts of the movie that spoof other movies. In that it succeeds spectacularly. War of the Worlds, The Village and more all get some screen time here. It’s not just movies but other parts of popular culture that get eviscerated in the movie though. Killer iPods, bumbling presidents who need to wait in a classroom after hearing of catastrophes and Tom Cruise’s couch-jumping escapades all get torn apart as well. It’s pretty funny. What’s neat is that you don’t actually need to have seen the movies being parodied. You only really need to have seen those movies’ trailers to get the jokes.

There have also been a number – about seven – TV spots created for the movie. They all follow the same theme of showing the movie parody portions of the film and all seem to have a target demographic in mind. For instance, some play up the African-American members of the cast. Another emphasizes Shaq’s role. Almost all of them show the scene of Shaq and Dr. Phil in the Saw scene where Phil saws off the wrong foot and passes out, which, quite frankly, never stops being funny. There was also a completely gratuitous video created showing Hugh Hefner’s three girlfriends engaging in a pillow fight while clad only in their underwear called “6 Times the Fun.” I may need to take a moment.

Online

Plant your tongue firmly in your cheek and buckle up for this one.

“Entrailers” is where you’ll find the trailer, TV spots and other videos such as the Hefner Girls pillow fight. In the “Goodies” section you’ll find the movie’s various posters available as both wallpaper downloads or as AIM icons. The “EEE-Card” is an e-card of an alien ship zapping the clothes off Carmen Electra and is pretty funny. Buy tickets to the movie via Fandango when you click the aptly named “Tickets” section and sign up for updates through “Get Infected.”

The “Talk Scary To Me” micro-site is pretty cool. It’s essentially a caption contest that lets you choose from a variety of images to caption and then submit them for the community to vote on. In the “Battle to the Death” game you don’t actually do much, just power-up a character who then fights someone else. You don’t actually do the fighting, just press a couple buttons to give your guy as much power as you can in a short period of time. Finally, “Visit Booble Earth” is a missile defense game that’s kind of fun.

They also created a MySpace page for the movie that recreates a lot of the content, only with the “friending” functionality of the network. In perhaps my favorite move, the trailer was made available on YouTube. And subscribing to the trailers and other video content through iTunes was easy as pie via a link to do so on the website.

Overall

The trailer, posters and website are all pretty good. But my favorite part of the campaign is the YouTube/iTunes move. As I wrote at the time it made what can sometimes be tricky or unclear incredibly easy for the audience. The rest of the push is good and definitely plays to the core group that will be interested in this but that one thing is an embracing of the power of the consumer in a meaningful and effective way.