Wakefield

It’s not specifically marketing related, but the premise of the movie is still bothering me. What we’re being sold here is a story of a man who capriciously abandons his family. That’s terrible and it’s only because the family is well off and everyone is white that this is presented as “nervous breakdown” and not “extraordinarily irresponsible.” Transpose this movie to the south side of Chicago and the story doesn’t involve news broadcasts and tip lines, it’s the third talking point from the bottom in a speech by a Conservative politician explaining why social services in the neighborhood are being cut. Again, that’s not on the marketing, but it’s a block I just can’t help but stumble over.

Everything, Everything

From one element to the other, the campaign has a nice consistent tone and feel, helped largely by the repeated use of that flowery design applied to the title treatment. The entire push is designed to pluck every single emotional heartstring the audience might have, showing longing glances and dreaming and promises to take each other away from it all. The movie is essentially being sold as an updated version of Rapunzel or other similar stories where the gallant prince comes to save the princess who’s been locked away in the tower by her over-protective father and show her there’s more to life than what she knows. With Snapchat.

Alien: Covenant

The movie actually being sold in the campaign is…yeah, it’s an Alien movie. It looks like it, it feels like it and there are plenty of xenomorphs running around and bursting out of chests to remind you that’s what’s happening here. There’s a deliberate effort here to walk the line between the overly-existential story of Prometheus and the more straight-forward action and terror of the older movies in the series that I think works well. That action and terror comes to the forefront the deeper you get into the marketing. It might not completely work to convert skeptics turned off by the last movie, but it works hard to do so.