When I wrote about the marketing of Lion last year I thought it made a decent emotional appeal to audiences who were looking to have themselves a good cry at the theater. I wasn’t wrong. The story follows Saroo, a young boy in India who becomes separated from his older brother on a train platform. … Continue reading After the Campaign: Lion
Picking Up the Spare: Lion, A Cure For Wellness
Lion An ad for the movie was taken out in the Los Angeles Times that denounced (gag) Pres. Trump's travel and visitation ban, making it clear that the production of the movie might not have taken place had the order been in place then. It's a decent political statement that also doubles as Oscar-timed promotion … Continue reading Picking Up the Spare: Lion, A Cure For Wellness
The Marketing Campaigns for 2017’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees
The nominees for this year's Academy Awards were announced yesterday. While Deadpool didn't get the nomination the filmmakers and many in the press had been hoping it would there were still a few surprises, including that the acting categories actually featured people of color after years of #OscarsSoWhite being the dominant theme of the reactionary … Continue reading The Marketing Campaigns for 2017’s Academy Awards Best Picture Nominees
Picking Up the Spare: Sing, Lion
Sing The cast - and their animated alter-egos - appeared on Fallon to an acapella version of Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime" that included MacCartney himself. Illumination got their Minions involved in a short MST3K-like video to help promote the movie. The studio partnered with the Lumyer app to bring movie-branded augmented reality to that app's users. … Continue reading Picking Up the Spare: Sing, Lion
Golden Globes Best Picture Nominee Marketing Campaigns
The Golden Globe nominees were announced yesterday, bringing with it the predictable annual mix of responses that range from outrage over who was perceived as being snubbed, complaints about those nominated seemingly only because the HFPA wants to party with them and more. Whatever the case, below is a list of the movies nominated for … Continue reading Golden Globes Best Picture Nominee Marketing Campaigns
Picking Up The Spare: Lion, The Arrival
Arrival The FiveThirtyEight looked at how the movies' RottenTomatoes score became part of the marketing campaign and puts that in the context of the site's continuing efforts to poke holes in RT and other rating aggregate sites. Lion Brent Lang at Variety gives the movie a big cover story about how this inspirational human story … Continue reading Picking Up The Spare: Lion, The Arrival
Picking Up the Spare: Moana, Lion, Suicide Squad
Moana Disney worked with Code.org to create a special Moana-themed coding tutorial meant to encourage kids, particularly girls, to get into learning about programming and software development using the Skitch language. That's available online and there are going to be special events at Apple stores between December 5th and 11th. The studio was the first … Continue reading Picking Up the Spare: Moana, Lion, Suicide Squad
MMM Recap: Week of 11/25/16 New Releases
Lion In terms of the marketing itself, it’s more or less consistent across the elements as to what it’s selling, which is Saroo’s search to uncover his true identity and find his family. That comes through just about everywhere. The website is lightest on this angle, but considering it sacrifices story for a charitable appeal, … Continue reading MMM Recap: Week of 11/25/16 New Releases
Movie Marketing Madness: Lion
In the new movie Lion, Dev Patel plays Saroo Brierley, a young man who was adopted by an Australian couple (Nicole Kidman and David Wenham) back when he was just a child. See Saroo was born in India but was separated from his mother and brother on the streets of Calcutta, with no idea where … Continue reading Movie Marketing Madness: Lion
