Movie Marketing Madness Recap: 2/12/16 New Releases

Did you miss any of this week’s MMM columns? Here’s a recap:

Remember

It’s a nice tidy little campaign. You certainly can’t say it doesn’t sell the emotional journey of the movie. In fact there’s so much on display it may turn off some people who aren’t fans of dour, serious stories like this. That’s all well and good, but the campaign also shows off a performance by Plummer that looks like it shouldn’t be missed.

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How To Be Single

It’s a neat campaign for something that looks to be this year’s Bridesmaids-type of movie, a story about women actually having some agency in the story, making their own choices based on their own desires and getting some laughs in the process. I like the brightness that’s consistent throughout the campaign elements, how there’s a regular usage of bold colors and big text to sell the movie as a bright and fun adventure that, as that “group tickets” button on the site makes clear, might be a good choice for viewing with your friends. That’s a similar tactic to what was used last year with the friendship drama I Miss You.

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Deadpool

It relies heavily on Reynolds’ inherent charm to sell a character a very small percentage of the audience is likely familiar without outside his one premious ill-fated cinematic outing. The sense of humor of the movie comes through in all elements of the movie to sell something that may not be a laugh-a-minute time at the movies but which certainly looks like it’s going to work hard to entertain. The focus on gags over story in the campaign has me *slightly* worried there’s little of the latter to be found, but we’ll see.

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Zoolander 2

What’s here sells a movie that really wants you to laugh and will trot out just about anything it needs to in order to make that happen. That includes what looks to be a substantial roster of cameos and a lot of gags about how clueless Zoolander and Hansel are. The problem is it’s hard to recapture that original feeling and too often even in the campaign it’s like everyone is too in on the joke and underlining how ridiculous the situations are a little too broadly, compared to the first one where everything just happened. That’s not to say the movie doesn’t look funny, just that the comedy looks a bit more self-aware here than in the first installment. We’ll see.

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Touched With Fire

The movie looks, based on the marketing, like a kinetic and fast-paced adventure that does what it can to take the audience inside the mind of the characters at the center of the story. It looks equal parts dramatic and funny in a human way and like it deserves to be seen by an audience that likes challenging films.

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By Chris Thilk

Chris Thilk is a freelance writer and content strategist with over 15 years of experience in online strategy and content marketing. He lives in the Chicago suburbs.