Finally a Movie Promotion Idea that Makes Sense »
Posted on November 28th, 2006 by Justin Seibert in Marketing | Leave A Comment

I promise this will be the last post about movie promotions for at least 2006. I wouldn’t have more than one right now if it weren’t for personal connections. The reason I’m writing today is that a nameless buddy of mine directed some promotional shorts for the new Ben Stiller movie, Mannequin, I mean Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I mean Night at the Museum. Yes, that’s it.

Regardless of my feelings about the originality of this movie, I really like the promotion their using to raise awareness, and not just because my friend was involved. In fact, I worked with him on a couple outlines he presented to them, but they didn’t recognize my obvious brilliance, so I should just take my ball and go home instead of complimenting the contest.

But out of some combination of trying to be big enough to handle rejection and needing something to post about, I highlight A Night at the Museum’s MySpace page.

Here’s the concept of the promotion: the movie’s about historical figures coming to life at night in the museum. So people are encouraged to shoot their own reject casting videos of historical figures trying to get a part in the movie.

That means that:
a. the contest is related to the movie
b. they’re not asking people to give testimonials for something they haven’t seen yet
c. they’re reaching a good number of people in the demographics likely to see the movie and in a medium (social networking, e.g. MySpace) where those people communicate with one another
d. I’m old. I know this because I don’t get the humor in the sample shorts that my friend directed. Well Marie Antionette’s wasn’t bad other than the awful “Let them have cake”, which I believe is actually attributable to one of the King Louies. In my defense, though, all of my buddy’s film work is unable to make me, or for that matter children on nitrous oxide, crack a smile.
e. altogether, it’s a good, relevant promotion that can get people excited about the new movie. Well played.

Regardless of my ancienticity, I can still appreciate this contest from a marketing perspective. It’s a good way to use social networking sites like MySpace to reach people before a movie premiers and get them excited about it.

TAGS: movie marketing, myspace

Now a Movie Contest for People that have Actually, You Know, Seen the Movie »
Posted on November 15th, 2006 by Justin Seibert in Marketing, Online Marketing | Leave A Comment

First off, let me thank everyone who came up to us at our table last night at the Washington County Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Banquet and Business Exposition last night. I was really pleased to learn more about your businesses and meet so many new people. We’ll do the actual drawing for the free portable DVD player today, but aren’t going to post the winner for privacy reasons. If you entered the contest, we’ll contact you to let you know whether or not you won.

Okay, the actual meat or meat-like substance of the post. A few days ago I wrote about We are Marshall’s contest for best fan page, which will be created and judged *before* the movie comes out and people could, oh I don’t know, actually figure out whether they liked the movie enough to devote a fan page to it.

Now Sony is promoting a contest for The Da Vinci Code prior to its release on DVD. They have a special contest Web site and are partnering with Yahoo’s Movie and Travel properties. Fans can enter clues to win a trip to Paris; the contest runs through February 8th.

A good contest all around it seems as far as contests go. They’re getting some free publicity and hopefully generating interest for fans to buy the movie when it comes out. By the way, if you’re ever running a contest for your company, be sure to put in rules about how often someone can enter. I should have learned that tip from Real Genius and Frito-Lay, but sadly I had to learn it the hard way from some jerk who designed a computer program to stuff the ballot box and won the grand prize.

What I’d really like to see, though, is a combination of the Marshall and Da Vinci contests. Have people that truly appreciate the movie devote Web space that will help drive traffic to your site and push sales for the DVD release. Or use something similar in having fans put up sites for an original in order to promote a sequel.

For you cynics, yes, the fan promotional information will still be somewhat contrived, but not nearly as much so. Especially if the prizes relate to the movie and are something true fans would really want to win.

TAGS: contest, movie marketing