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The playwright Lofton Mitchell (Bubblin’ Brown Sugar) was fond of saying “There ain’t but seven original stories, and they’re all in the Bible.” The art of it all, he explained, was in how you made those core, archetypal stories feel fresh and relevant to new audiences. Of course, the same thing could well be said about marketing.
Among the marketing archetypes, such as The Giveaway, The Ego-Booster, and The Reveal, the entertainment biz is particularly fond of The First. That is, making something old seem new enough to plausibly claim that it’s being done for the first time. Done right, Firsts typically deliver two nice bonuses: They appeal to jaded consumers, and they can generate added value via PR hits. Take, for just one example, the Simpsonize Me application Fox and Burger King rolled out to as part of the promotion for The Simpsons Movie. Was it truly the first time anyone could have their image transformed in a particular branded style? No. But it was brilliantly executed and it felt enough like the first time to prove a huge viral success.
And this, naturally, was followed a year or so later, by a variety of popular “Obamacon” image makers; one example here.
In our long run as marketers, the Stradella Road partners can claim a few such Firsts of our own. What follows are some of the campaigns that we’re particularly proud of…
LORD OF THE RINGS. At a time when “social” was not yet part of the new media lexicon, studio legal departments regularly sent out cease-and-desist letters to anyone who posted Star Trek images, and “fan” was considered another word for “copyright infringer,” we convinced studio management to work with fans in a new and completely open way. We would offer a continuous flow of information, create a dialog, and tap–simultaneously–into the passion of both the filmmakers and the core audience. Most people thought we were nuts… but it all turned out pretty well.
WEDDING CRASHERS. When it comes to putting your image into a branded video or animation, you probably think of the terrific OfficeMax Elf Yourself campaign. But this modern digital spin on those old wooden carny figures with a hole cut out for you to insert your face and have a picture taken appeared first in our promotion WEDDING CRASHER, itself a long overdue revival of the raunchy R-rated comedy. CRASH THIS TRAILER was a big hit with consumers (4 million+ video views), bloggers, and the media, in part due to a clever seeding effort.
SNAKES ON A PLANE. There were a lot of unique aspects to a campaign that grew into a surprise pop-culture sensation—and a low-budget B-movie that ended up with 95% consumer awareness by the time of its release. (And there is still some debate over just how valuable all the hoopla was, with naysayers pointing to the fact that the movie didn’t make $100million theatrically, or even half of that. We point, instead to the fact SNAKES earned double to triple comparable titles and continued to outperform in ancillary windows as proof of the campaign’s impact.) But the First we want to focus on here was the “Get A Call From Sam Jackson” gag that used a clever piece of technology to allow consumers to personalize a message to send to friends and family from Mr. Samuel L. Jackson himself (since redone by Alec Baldwin for 30 Rock, amongst others). This went so viral so fast we almost developed whiplash.
For SNAKES, we also created the first ever hommage (you see how this works?) to the first ever internet viral video. That piece of history was called ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US. Our take, ALL YOUR SNAKES ARE BELONG TO US, yielded 5 million+ video views on a budget of less than $5,000.
TRAILER REMIXES. One of the advantages to covering “new” media is that you can sometimes get away with things traditional marketing departments either couldn’t or wouldn’t. After overcoming a number of internal obstacles, we asked the very talented British DJ/VJ team AddictiveTV to remix our trailer for TAKE THE LEAD and the result was a terrific and fresh music-video style piece that played perfectly to the target audience. We liked the piece so much, that we engaged the guys again on SNAKES ON A PLANE and SHOOT EM UP. Now? Everyone uses them! Some of my favorite pieces they’ve done for other studios include FAST & FURIOUS, IRON MAN, and SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, and now other marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, including RED BULL, Europa League Soccer, and even the OLYMPICS.
AND THE BEST OF THE REST…
• For THE GOLDEN COMPASS, we took the age-old “if you could be any animal…” idea and transformed it into the first ever Daemon Generator, which generated more than 10 million page views around the world.
• For TENACIOUS D IN THE PICK OF DESTINY, we released the first ever faux anti-Piracy public service announcement, JACK BLACK ON PIRACY, which racked up millions of video views across dozens of web sites—as well as numerous calls to the MPAA asking about their hysterical new campaign (they called us and were very good natured about it when we explained the situation). We also commissioned the greatly talented Rob Schrab to create an original video series of “Hell O’Clock News” reports to support the film that went on to develop their own cult following.
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