Following on from yesterdays post, the almost completely inactive Twitter account for the film – @TheFireRises – has tweeted a heavily edited document in a similar vein to those seen yesterday. You can check out the full version below.
Having background materials that seem to be directly lifted out of the film make the experience of waiting to watch the picture and moment when you finally do a richer and more engaging one as a result.
The document mentions something called ‘OPERATION EARLY BIRD’ and, when searching for this, one can find the website (suitably titled) www.operationearlybird.com.
At present, the site simply has a digital clock counting down until 1000PST (see image below), but with a 6 minute prologue attached to the upcoming ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol” film in IMAX cinemas, could ‘Operation Early Bird’ be referring to the release of a new trailer preview online? In the ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign for ‘The Dark Knight’, a new trailer was shown online although it had been heavily ‘defaced by the Joker’ with squiggles and drawings over each of the frames so as to disguise what was truly happening; a superb way of whetting an audiences’ appetite only to starve them further of a final reveal.
In 17 hours, I’ll update this post with what has happened so be sure to subscribe and join in with the beginning of what is set to be another brilliant marketing campaign for one of Christopher Nolan’s films.
Earlier today, Wired and Empire received two ‘Wikileaks’-looking documents from an anonymous source. The two documents look to be the beginnings of Warner Bros. campaign for ‘The Dark Knight Rises’. There has already been some great online vs. offline activity thanks to Empire which you can read about here but this appears to be the true start of another internet-wide marketing initiative to earn even more interest for the most anticipated film of next year. You can read about the previous two campaigns for Chris Nolan’s ‘Inception’ and ‘The Dark Knight’ over here.
The great thing about both these ‘documents’ is the ambiguity they present which is enough to spark debate both online and offline. This is how you begin an internet campaign. providing information that is interest enough to have people commentate on it from all over the world and have people like me blogging about it and feeding it on to more people. It’s a lovely proposition and one which I hope will be the beginning of another great online adventure for a Chris Nolan film.
The two documents are similar to those received (also by Wired) last year for Inception. You can read about it all at the link here.
Check out the two images below and leave your thoughts in the comments below:
BETC Paris have released another wonderful advert for the premium pay French television channel, Canal+. Entitled “The Bear”, the advert does a beautiful job of capturing the integration the channel has with the best that cinema has to offer. Canal+ has of course famously produced some wonderful artistic pieces from David Lynch including ‘Mulholland Drive’ (2001) and ‘Inland Empire’ (2006). Watch the ad below:
To see more work from BETC Paris, visit their site here.
Nando’s South Africa have released a new advert yesterday featuring the actors impersonating some of the most hated dictators of recent times including Robert Mugabe, Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, P.W. Botha and Idi Amin. In the advert, Mugabe reminisces of better times when the other aforementioned rulers were still alive.
The ad is polarising opinions online and undoubtedly offline too. Have a look at the spot below and leave your thoughts in the comments section below:
There will be many viewers of this advert that argue who argue that it trivialises the terrible things these men have done and the lives lost at their hands. But shouldn’t these dictators be ridiculed? What is more awful: this 60-second TV spot or the fact that Robert Mugabe is allowed to continue serving as the president of a formally prosperous country which he has since brought to its knees?
I believe that with laughter comes perspective and laughter can serve as a way of deconstructing and unmasking the things we fear most. It is a weapon which many people greatly undervalue. This advert ridicules the deceased dictators of old and scathingly maroons Mugabe in an empty room with no one around. Whilst I do feel that the copy narrated at the end of the advert does go someway to trivialise the message to an extent, the executional aspects more than make up for it.
Was it made purely to get banned? Is it engineered as a piece of viral communication? Are there are further underlying political intentions? Or are Nando’s simply using dead dictators to sell chicken?
David Ogilvy started his career selling door to door and, despite this guy not wanting to go into advertising, soon-to-be-famous Kenny Brooks will go on to have a glittering career as a fast-talking, wise-cracking comic.
Admittedly the title of ‘The Greatest Salesman in the World’ was a big overstatement and intended purely to lure you in, but if Windex, Flash or any other cleaning product such as the one Brooks is selling here knocked on my door with the same demeanour and spiel, I would buy a box-full.
Take a look at the video of Kenny Rogers below selling door-to-door, then re-watch it and listen out for all the jokes you missed the first time. Would you buy some?
Empire magazine are running a voting system on their website to get film-fans and batman-fanatics to cast their votes to see which of two covers they will preview online first: Batman (played by Christian Bale) or Bane (played by Tom Hardy).
Traditionally, the movie magazine publishers reveal the cover of their upcoming issue online to tease what will be between the pages of the next publication. However, by allowing those who normally read Empire and those who may only read it on occasion or not at all, this is an excellent way to build hype around a particular issue whilst also showcasing the brand as being the first and best for the latest movie news.
At the time I cast my vote there were 10721 clicks for Batman and 31481 for Bane which gives you some idea of how many people are taking part in this and are working together to reveal the individual covers.
The internet (and social media in particular) provides us with up-to-the-second information on whatever we want which means movie-news publications such as Empire and Total Film have been hit hard. For example, I stopped buying Empire magazine about 2 years ago as it was already out of date the moment it was published. Having said that, I will most likely be buying this upcoming issue and it may prompt me, and a great deal of others, to continue to do so as the puffery currently promotes information only being speculated about online; the printed page seems to have a certain degree of authority and integrity that online lacks in many cases (in my opinion).
What do you think of this marketing idea and will you be picking up the next issue when it arrives in stores across the UK Thursday 24th November 2011?
UPDATE:
Both covers have been revealed after over 15,000 individual votes each from various fanboys around the web. The two images are great and this initial exercise seems to have been very successful. Click here to find out more or have a look below at both of the covers:
The shops may have been full of seasonal gifts, fake snow and giant tins of Quality Street for nearly two months now but, finally, Christmas is here.
Well, it will be in 6 weeks but one of the key-signifiers that the Yuletide season is already well underway is the brand new John Lewis Christmas Advert. In previous years, Coca Cola’s Christmas Adverts have always earmarked the beginning of the festive period but John Lewis have been making a concerted effort since just before 2008 to ensure that their advertising communications become the first door on our advent calendars.
This morning, I woke up early to watch the new advert which I had read would be screened online before airing tomorrow night during primetime on The X Factor. I felt like a kid on Christmas morning (how tiresomely tragic). Grabbing my phone, I scanned through my emails to find one entitled “JohnLewisRetail just uploaded a video”.
I clicked the link, pressed play and watched as 90 seconds of sickeningly sentimental drivel fawned and cooed and flattered before my eyes.
And I lapped it up.
Every second of it.
Here’s the press release to accompany the video:
“For gifts you can’t wait to give” There is something even more wonderful than receiving the perfect gift, and that is knowing you have found the perfect gift for someone you love. This year we have brought to life the feeling of excitement and anticipation you get when you have found that perfect gift for someone and cannot wait for Christmas day to arrive.
Our advert follows one little boy who is impatiently counting down to Christmas. We see him tapping his fingers, gazing out of the window, even trying to cast a spell on a clock to make time go faster, but to no avail. The track ‘Please, Please, Please let me get what I want’, was originally recorded by the Smiths, and has been rerecorded by emerging artist Slow Moving Millie.
Yes, the advert is too cutesy for its own good. Yes, it’s so sugary that viewers with diabetes probably shouldn’t watch it. And, yes, it is a carefully executed piece of dynamite engineered solely to evoke the kind of irrational emotional response that we don’t care to defend in anyway.
But I love it.
The advert was lovingly crafted by the geniuses at Adam&Eve London who have been the incumbent agency of the retails giant for a number of years now. They created the past few Christmas campaigns and have showed continuous progression with their adverts for John Lewis. Last years ad was based around the notion of ‘Those who care about showing they care” which, of course, ties in beautifully to this current proposition: “For gifts you can’t wait to give”.
Awwwww.
I tweeted about this advert this morning as soon as I saw it and received a lovely reply from John Lewis almost immediately – a really lovely way to show customer loyalty and build communication through relationship marketing.
Awwwwwwwwwwwwwww.
Here’s a behind the scenes look at this wonderful piece of magic.
From a strategic perspective, the idea of gifts we cannot wait to give is just beautiful. It’s such an incredibly strong theme that I believe lasts almost all of our lives.
I remember when I was almost 6 years old, I wasn’t sure what to get my Mum and Dad for Christmas and so I kept hold of my pocket money and gave it to them in my old blue-velcro wallet. I wrote a note inside explaining how much money there was and how much each that would equate to. I think the grand total was £6.48. My Mum ended up crying and my Dad had to explain that whilst they appreciated the gesture, I couldn’t really do that.
Nowadays, whether it’s a birthday or Christmas, I spend an awful lot of time looking for the perfect present – whether it’s handmade or shop-bought. It has to be perfect. Despite being almost 21 and at Uni, my parents have asked me to write a Christmas list for them and I’m really struggling. So far there are 4 things on it – one of which is simply “A Christmas dinner with everyone”. Boring, I know.
However, I’ve got a long list of things that I will be buying for other people. Details on what to wrap certain things in, where to buy particular gifts, how much it will cost, what to write on the card etc etc etc.
This Christmas advert from John Lewis perfectly encapsulates what Christmas is really about. For some people it’s still a religious festival, for others it’s a break from work and for children it’s a time of magic and wonder.
For all of us, however, it’s about sharing. With friends. With family. With strangers.
With Paramount Pictures producing another puerile piece of paint-by-numbers ‘horror’ junk set to clutter our cinemas conveniently before Halloween 2011, what mastermind marketing tricks are they pulling to make fans of the franchise enter the cinema once again? Watch the trailer below and all will be revealed in the final frame:
Fans have been asked to tweet about the film using their postcode to get the film to play in their town before the actual premiere itself. ’Predictable Activity 3′ will premiere on October 18th in the top 20 cities with the most tweets, 3 days before the film’s global release.
If you really want to see the third and, if there’s any justice, final instalment of the supernatural franchise here’s what you need to do:
1.Go to www.ParanormalMovie.com and select your city from a global map
2. Customise your tweet which uses a unique hashtag
3. Once your message is tweeted, it coutns as a vote. A leader board will then show the top 20 global markets in real-time.
Rob Moore, Vice Chairman of Paramount Pictures, had this to say about the campaign:
“The support of this franchise from the online community is phenomenal. We again look to reward them for that support by offering them the chance to see it first, this time expanding our reach globally,”
I think it’s a nice idea to allow an existing and excited user fan-base to incentivise others in their online social network to see the film before anyone else – adding a lovely sense of exclusivity to the experience which, in itself, will become a talking point. Whilst the competition obviously focuses on having people tweet from their town about the film, there is the added benefit that more people will hear about it through these means and, thus, start a ripple effect where the marketers hope that followers in their locality will do the same.
Despite my hate for the vulgar, cliché and offensively predictable ‘horror’ movies that Hollywood vomits into cinemas every year, the idea of influencing a sort of ‘social-networking osmosis’ is an interesting one that more and more advertisers are beginning to use.
To promote the celluloid abortion that is the sequel-spin-off from the ‘Shrek’ series, ‘Puss In Boots’, DreamWorks have created a parody of Wieden+Kennedy’s much adored ‘The Man Your Man Could Smell Like’ for Old Spice. Take a look at this piss-poor pussy parody below:
Why didn’t they end the video with “I’m on a donkey” instead of a horse I guess we’ll never know. The video has, at time of publishing, received 1,184,230 individual views from around the world and the production company have attempted a very social-media oriented approach to their strategy with YouTube being a key component; take a look at the ‘Puss In Boots’ channel here. Recently, a ‘Promoted Tweet’ was used to focus attention on the upcoming release although the box office takings will be the judge of how well this cyber-hype works for our feline friend.
Warner Bros. have created this brilliant living, breeding, bacteria-based billboard to promote their upcoming virus-outbreak thriller, Contagion. Two giant petri dishes were constructed and were “inoculated with live bacteria including penicillin, mold and pigmented bacteria and almost overnight have revealed the true Contagion – an artistic interpretation of the spread of a virus as depicted in the film.”
Take a look at the video below and watch the billboard grow before your very eyes:
According the Warner Bros. press release: “The public was invited to witness first-hand the remarkable growing power of natural bacteria on Wednesday August 31st from 11:00 AM — 2:00 PM. The first 50 people who arrived received passes to see “Contagion” in theatres and other themed prizes.”
Having advertising work that is not only eye-catching, creative and memorable but also something which embodies the very message that it is trying to convey shows just how powerful advertising can be. All you need is some imagination, some rules to break and, in this case, bacteria.
