All the Marketing Magic of the Movies

I’m not sure about you, but in my circle of marketing contacts, the last few weeks have all been coloured with the same half-panicked question: do we post about the Queen’s passing on our company socials?

It’s certainly been an exercise in restraint, especially when the vast majority of the bigger players took to adding memorial banners to their websites, shutting down social media posting save for a solemn image of Her Majesty, and took to pausing adverts.

Of course, we don’t all work for giants – nor do we all have cause for following in their footsteps. Whether I’m right or wrong is up for debate, but my stance has very much been to march onwards in terms of our marketing. As with all notable events, the airwaves became clogged very quickly with messages of condolences, a traffic jam of tweets and well-wishes stifling social media. A small voice would have made no difference one way or another.

Naturally, there’s the matter of respect – which we showed in how our team went about their duties. But to go further felt like the opposite, as if to capitalise on a mournful moment just to be part of the flock.

We'll likely be pondering if we took the right road in the quiet moments that unfold as we all collectively look back on 2022. Uncertainty aside, there's one thing marketers can all be sure of: we each navigated a tricky situation as well as we could.

Last week, after another thrilling episode of House of the Dragon, I was visited by a meandering daydream. In it, I hosted an awards ceremony for the television and movie marketers peddling some of the year’s best entertainment. It's a daydream that's come and gone during 2022, spurred on by the fascinating marketing methods being rolled out to lure us to the screen.

If I was ever to host such an awards, I'd award HBO’s marketers with the esteemed (and imaginary) honour of ‘Best Variety of Marketing Channels’. The team building hype before House of the Dragon's release would have whole-heartedly deserved it for their impressive strategy, with one of the highlights being hatching your own AR dragon egg. Such a broad scope and the engagement of reality-bending channels really helped to fold a fantasy world into our own and make us feel like part of the action.

It’s not just HOTD that’s impressed viewers in 2022, either. This year also gave us Stranger Things 4 (and as a result, every summer playlist will now have ‘Running Up That Hill (Deal with God)’ included).

I'd definitely have to include an award category that nailed the fun way Netflix marketed its flagship show, tapping into experiential brand crossovers to reach the viewers lurking just outside of Netflix’s grasp. Previous crossovers between the show and famous brands have been nostalgic and fun, and this year we got a pretty fun Dominos x Stranger Things team-up that allowed customers to order pizza with the movement of their head. I smell a win for 'Best Brand Crossover', surely?

Elsewhere, my imaginary awards would definitely have a category called ‘Oh God, It’s Everywhere’, as scathing as that might sound. The winner would most definitely be Amazon’s Rings of Power, a show marketed with such a heavy hand that you’d think Amazon was truly desperate for its success. Oh, wait.

From the tape on every boxed Amazon Prime order (the name emblazoned in about a half dozen languages, so at least they bulk-bought and made the most of it), to RoP glaring back at Prime Video users every time they logged in, Rings of Power has loomed large. In the US, however, efforts have been more creative, with customers receiving their packages in themed parcels or collecting them from decorated Amazon lockers.

OK, we get it: the streaming platforms and their marketing departments have been doing well. But what about Hollywood? After all, cinemas have the unenviable task of drawing people from the comfort of their sofas to share a screen with strangers – the opposite challenge to streaming platforms, who’ve had two years to perfect their vantage point.

La La Land has had a mixed bag in 2022, but whoever said ‘no press is bad press’ likely didn’t anticipate the storm surrounding Don’t Worry Darling. OK, so this probably wasn’t planned by the marketing/comms team, but the drama unfolding around the Florence Pugh-led, Harry Styles-followed film has ranged from rumours about unequal pay, a spitting incident, accusations of Styles lacking acting abilities, and whispers of misery on set. The result has been a melting pot of fury and press, which will surely turn into curiosity sales (I’m certainly intrigued to see if it translates onto screen). Best Accidental Marketing, anyone?

Elsewhere, we’ve seen the usual Marvel/car crossovers that are inexplicably a part of every summer blockbuster marketing strategy – even when it makes no sense. That being said, how Marvel markets their ever-expanding cinematic empire has had peaks and troughs that constitute whole mountain ranges at this point, and there’s likely a case for learning from everything they’ve done.

If I happened to be a betting man (and my fictional awards were as contentious as the Oscars), I’d likely put my money on the marketers working on television shows and streaming platforms to sweep the board at 'The Markies' (I've named it now, so it's got to exist).

There are a lot of lessons to be learnt from how marketers are making movie magic happen – from embracing new technologies and experiential marketing, to leveraging what we know works already (like Netflix publishing twenty second highlights of films like Do Revenge on YouTube, or gifting Spotify users with a custom Stranger Things tie-in playlist) – but the biggest is perhaps the oldest: know your audience. After a few years of having to be inside, we seem to have gotten quite cosy on our sofas…but we’re also after something different to whet our appetites on the way there. And - thanks to marketing teams pushing the boat out - we’re getting it.

Now if only Amazon UK could start delivering my packages in fancy Lord of the Rings packaging...

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It’s a short week for me, as I take my leave for a two-day hen do (although the bride to be wishes instead to refer to it as the ‘Wolverine Death Squad’, which I am A-OK with). I can’t say what we're doing right now as she might read this week’s MMB and I can’t bear to face the wrath of her bridesmaids. Suffice to say, I’ll be using the three days I do have in the office to tie up some loose ends following two successful partner co-marketing activities, as well as some forward planning for when regular scheduling resumes.

Have a great week and thanks for joining me!