My latest post for The Hollywood Reporter is a recap of the marketing campaign for The Call of The Wild. To sell the movie Disney has created a campaign that emphasizes both the heartfelt nature of the story and the life-or-death nature of the wilderness over a century ago, putting Ford at the center of … Continue reading Selling The Call of The Wild
Selling Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
My latest marketing recap column at The Hollywood Reporter covers Disney’s massive campaign for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. The Rise of Skywalker comes as the end cap to what is now a nine film series, just as creator George Lucas long said he originally envisioned. At the center of all the films — … Continue reading Selling Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Selling Frozen II
My latest post for The Hollywood Reporter is a recap of the marketing campaign Disney has run to date for Frozen II. To thread the needle of appealing to several distinct age groups, Disney’s campaign has presented the movie as both familiar and new to the audiences that powered Frozen in 2013 to $1.27 billion … Continue reading Selling Frozen II
Selling The Art of Racing in The Rain
My latest post at The Hollywood Reporter is a recap of the marketing for The Art of Racing in The Rain. Disney’s campaign for the movie, which it inherited from Fox 2000, has used all the conventions common on talking dog movies to sell a feel good alternative in a period between super hero adventures … Continue reading Selling The Art of Racing in The Rain
Selling The Lion King
My latest post for The Hollywood Reporter is a recap of the marketing campaign for The Lion King, one that was aided by the fact I was able to interview Disney’s President of Marketing to get background information on the effort. A strategically timed "pulsed" campaign by the studio aligned its promotional beats with big … Continue reading Selling The Lion King
Quick Takes – Marketing and Media News for 2/13/18
I don’t have much to add to it but if you haven’t read this piece at Buzzfeed about the very real dangers we face from technology that allows reality to be manipulated in scary ways, you need to do so right damn now. Similarly, Wired has a report on the upheaval within Facebook in the … Continue reading Quick Takes – Marketing and Media News for 2/13/18
Quick Takes: Content Marketing and Media News for 1/16/18
Media Crackle will rebrand itself as “Sony Crackle” because, according to the story, the company wants to leverage the power of the Sony name. That’s code for “the person who kept insisting it didn’t need to be corporately branded is no longer with the company and so someone finally got their way.” CBS and Viacom … Continue reading Quick Takes: Content Marketing and Media News for 1/16/18
Quick Takes: Content Marketing and Media News for 11/7/18
Interesting findings here that longer headlines on branded content have higher click-through rates. Perhaps because they’re more effective at quickly drawing the reader into the story? Google is deprecating old RSS feeds from Google News next month, taking a convoluted approach that involves discarding the old but offering new feeds without setting up redirects or … Continue reading Quick Takes: Content Marketing and Media News for 11/7/18
Video is Everywhere, But Time and Money are Finite
Last week the news outlet Mic became the latest player to join the trend of laying off staff as part of a (clears throat) pivot to video. [genuflects] As Peter Kafka notes at Recode, there are a few common factors publishers cite when doing so, the biggest being the desire to tap into the pool … Continue reading Video is Everywhere, But Time and Money are Finite
Movie Marketing Madness: Cars 3
When we meet back up with Lightning McQueen (voiced by Owen Wilson) in Cars 3, he’s at a crossroads, so to speak, in his career as a racer. A new generation of cars has come up while he’s been on the circuit that is faster, sleeker and surer of their abilities. Just as he and … Continue reading Movie Marketing Madness: Cars 3
Chris Thilk 