The Golden Compass: Round 2

Most of the time when I decide to blog, I start by looking for a new movie that interests me and I begin looking for ways the company is deciding to market it to the public. I decided to change this format up because of how I couldn't find anything really that interesting, and also because of how excited I am for The Golden Compass.

As mentioned in my previous blog, I read each of the books this summer and actually enjoyed them more than The Lord of the Rings. The movies in turn are actually being compared to that trilogy on the basis of their production costs and how much they plan to bring in.

The marketing for this movie is sure to be huge, especially seeing as how it began almost a year before it was released. The newest marketing tactic used by the studio is the release of several pictures highlighting key characters in the movie as well as their daemon.

One interesting thing I noticed about this pictures however was the fact that everyone was pictured with their daemon except for the witch, Serafina Pekkala, who actually did posses a daemon in the books (a goose), but seems to be flying solo in the movies. An interesting part of the novel, and conclusion, revolves around the fact that witches, unlike humans such as Lyra, have the capability of separting themselves from their daemons for a large distance. For people such as Lyra, if their daemon

The two additional movies to follow that complete the trilogy are in the works already. The only downfall is seeing how much this one actually brings in to begin with. The studio has already commented on the fact that they will not produce the movies if this one fails. If you think they are bluffing, look at the how Fox ruined the great novel Eragon, and we have yet to hear anything about the sequel book Eldest being adapted to the big screen (thank god).

Go Big Or Go Home

The problem with coming out with a blockbuster movie your first time around is simply that audiences will expect that every time there after. This is the big problem facing director M. Night Shyamalan, most famously known for his 1999 hit The Sixth Sense.

Since The Sixth Sense, Shyamalan's movies have seem to be going continuously downhill according to how much the gross at the theaters. The underlying question that seems to rear its ugly head is that is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? Many people would argue that his films haven't really changed that much, which are a big part to the downfall. The best part of The Sixth Sense was the huge twist at the end that left audiences dumbfounded as to how they did not notice that before. Now, as Shyamalan's movies are released, audiences go to the movies and expect the twist and look for it, which in turn make them anger when they either figure them out or there isn't one at all.

Personally I always enjoy Shyamalan's movie. I find them to be interesting and always take a route that you wouldn't expect. Audiences disliked movies such as The Village or Lady in the Water mostly because they did not follow the common trends Shyamalan placed in his previous films. Shyamalan expressed this in an interview were he proclaimed he felt that marketing actually took away from those films because they were not supposed to look like supernatural thrillers, but instead stories of hope.

Hopefully audiences have gotten that out of their system seeing as how Shyamalan's newest movie does not seem to dig into the supernatural world at all. The Happening, starring Mark Wahlberg, seems to be Shyamalans interpretation on An Inconvenient Truth. The world is ravaged and plants start creating a poison in the air that kills humans. Wahlberg, a local biology teacher, takes his family on the run from these deadly toxins while in the mean time trying to patch up his marriage (seems like at the end of the world his wife shouldn't start getting so picky).

It will be interesting to see how the studios begin to market the movie as its release date grows nearer, especially since the originally version of the script wasn't picked up by any studios Shyamalan's first time around.

So far not even a teaser trailer or movie poster has been released for the movie, which makes me believe the studio is either not impressed with his final product, or trying to create a nice little WOM hype throughout the internet. Shayamalan's films are most commonly related to his cult following so I believe that the studio feels that people who should know about the film, do. The only marketing tactic so far is the release date, set for June 13th 2008, which falls on Friday the 13th. Personally I think the studios better do a little better than that with their marketing campaign, and soon, before the Shaymalan's cult train leaves the station.

So You Think You Can Market?

So I promised myself once the contest started, I would be doing it mostly for the extra points. Well, lets through that idea out the window right now. I graduate in May so I think winning something like this would look pretty sweet on my resume.

So if you've clicked through from the site, and haven't voted, I wanted to take a little bit of your time to talk about the contest. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, I entered an online contest called "So You Think You Can Market?". The professor for the class offered extra point, which I very much needed, so I decided to participate.

The contests is for www.thebargainqueen.com, and how they can possibly attract male viewers to what appears to be a female dominate site. You have a limited budget of $500, so your ideas have to really work on the WOM principle.

I wrote up a page long explanation, but they only put in a paragraph (understandable). However, since the only comment to the contest mentioned "But I don't understand the model for the second one. My vote goes to the first one of the two:", I decided to use my blog to promote my idea.

My idea is pretty simple. Facebook is a growing web site that males and females our age find themselves on everyday. One of the newest statistic I heard was that Facebook is actually more popular than porn with kids ages 18-24. We all know the gifts application, where you can send gifts to your friends for a dollar (they are just little icons that they can collect). Well my idea is for every time the Bargain Queen has a new product to promote, they create and icon that looks exactly like it. They then partner with facebook to give users the ability to buy the icon and send it to there friends. There are two perks to this.

First off, students in class mentioned how they usually don't buy the gifts unless they know the money goes to charity. I suggest Bargain Queen partners with a charity and donates half of the proceedings to that charity. This way, Bargain Queen gets nice rep for helping out charity, and they are helping themselves.

The second perk is by sending the person the icon, you automatically enter them into a drawing that can actually win them that item in real form. Winners will be drawn at the end of the month, and people who are chosen will then receive their free real life gift in the mail.

So thats my plan, and I'm sticken to it. They pitted me up against a professional from Washington DC with a good idea, so it'll be interesting to see how it pans out. If you wish to vote (do it), then click the link below.

So You Think You Can Market?

The Dark Knight Does It Again

When it comes to the idea of movie marketing, I have to admit that I am constantly impressed by the campaign put on by Warner Bros. to promote it's newest Batman movie, The Dark Knight. Whenever marketing is discussed in my major our teachers always push the idea of how important WOM (word of mouth) is to your campaign, as well as how hard it is to obtain. Warner Bros. has definetley taken this complex idea and made it look more simple than it ever has.

My previous post about The Dark Knight talked about the viral marketing campaign they had at the Comicon in San Diego in July. Their newest scavenger hunt sent Batman lovers all throughout their home cities searching for clues that could be found on its newest viral marketing site whysoserious.com.

People from all over the US set out in their city to find just exactly what they were looking for in their clue. Guided only by their hint as well as a partial snapshot of what exactly they were looking for, viewers who found the letter were then instructed to send it to the web site where it would be posted and they would be credited for finding it first

So what exactly did everyone find? A nice little letter from the Joker explaining "The Only Sensible Way to Live in This World Is Without Rules". After clicking on the envelope were this is spelled out, a picture of the Joker from the movie appears. By clicking on the picture of the Joker, you are then directed to their NEWEST virial marketing campaign, released on October 31st.

The Joker instructs its viewers to paint themselves up like him and go around town taking pictures in front of famous landmarks. The letter is actually pretty funny because you can see how the company is trying to protect itself all throughout the letter while still making it sound like the Joker wrote it. For instance, one sentence explains how it doesn't want to be sued if someone does something stupid for this scavenger hunt:

"Put on a show in front of the most famous landmark in your city, but dont get arrested -- you are no use to me behind bars"

They also try to ensure that viewers know their pictures will not be used anywhere without their permission by stating:

"Pictures are like ears: anything you lend me I am not giving back"

All and all it is shaping up to be a pretty interesting campaign. Keep checking back to the newest virial site Rory's Kiss of Death to see what happens once the Joker has filled his quota of photos.


On a side note, I'd like to give a little shout out to Judy Kim, producer of the a new independent movie titled Screeh! of the Decapitated. Our class recently had the pleasure of having Judy come into our classroom and talk about the movie industry as well as her film. To be completly honest, I had no intentions of watching the film when I first began seeing it advertised around our campus (ITHACA COLLEGE REPRESENT!). However, after listening to Judy, which was easily one of the best public speakers I have ever listened to, talk about her film I became interested. Just from listening to her you could tell that she knew exactly what she was talking about as well as that she had experienced a lot in the movie industry. So, if you're a fan of such movies as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, this movie will definetly be up your ally and worth your time to check out.

Tekken Takes To The Theaters

Taking a multi-million dollar video game and turning it into a multi-million dollar movie is by no means a new idea what so ever. The first video adaptations came with Super Mario Bros in 1993 which proved to be a humongous flop. Mortal Kombat followed a few years later raking in about $70 million, somewhat respectable but making it fall second to the film adaptation of Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.

Comingsoon.net was the first to announce the arrival of the newest video game- to- movie Tekken, set to release in 2009. Marketing tactics are dismal seeing as how production is just beginning, but the hype for the movie is already beginning. It should be interesting to see how much and how exactly the company plans to market this movie to the consumers when it is released. The reason for this stems from the latest video game movie DOA: Dead or Alive, which was barely marketed at all in the US (and the movie kicked some serious ....). The movie, costing around $21 million, only brought in $6 million worldwide.

So far the only marketing tactics placed out have been the release of the movie poster. I was also able to find what was called a teaser trailer, but appears to be fan made. None the less, it appears that the people who will be potraying the characters are shown in the clip.

The movies main marketing tactic of establishing its identity has already been employed for the past 13 years. The movies realease will also be helped by the release of the newest Tekken game, Tekken 6, which is to be realased on Playstation 3 in November. The game will feature the return of the majority of the Tekken characters as well as the introduction of three new characters.

Not So Incredible

I remember being a senior and high school when I first saw the preview for The Hulk. I was extremely excited for the summer to roll around seeing as how any Marvel movie was always worth my time and my nine dollars. I also remember that up until The Hulk, I had purchased ever Marvel movie on DVD. Like I said though, up until The Hulk....

I will be the first to admit that I was wooed by the ways of Hollywood and once again feel prey to a heavily marketed movie with a crappy story line. The Hulk did considerably well it's first week, bringing in about $62 million opening weekend. What looked like a promising start though soon dwindled into a downward spiral of failure. Thanks to the o-so-great word of mouth tactic, sales and viewings of the movie began to drop substantially. The movie brought in around $245 million overall when the dust had settled, but the reputation of the movie had taken a much harder hit.

I guess it should not have been such a huge shocker for me then when I noticed that Marvel studios announced that they will be producing another Hulk story, titled The Incredible Hulk.
To the naked eye, this idea seems like a poor choice on the part of Marvel to try to pick up where they left off and save the movie from extinction entirely. However, taking a closer look, you can see how Marvel production company has taken the necessary steps to place this movie out of the shadow the The Hulk, and into a spotlight all of its own.

I guess the easiest way to look at this is by comparing Batman with Batman Begins. Same characters, but completely different storyline (the original Batman will always be the best). Sad to say, Eric Bana will not be returning to play Bruce Banner. Edward Norton instead will lead the cast along with Liv Tyler replacing Jennifer Connelly as Betty Ross.

The coolest thing about this movie is that it is not totally disregarding the previous movie, but definitely not following in its footsteps. The creators have the "learn from our mistakes" attitudes when it comes to this film. They will use the first movie to get the idea of the Hulk's origins out of the way and build from there. A few things they are changing in this movie is a smaller, more believable different shade of green hulk.

So far, little marketing has been taken place. It will be interesting to see how the general public responds to the marketing tactics seeing as how many viewers still feel cheated from the last film. A web site was recently posted up with no more than the storyline of the new movie to offer up to viewers. A poster for the movie has also been released and showed off at the 2007 New York City Licensing Show.

Some common things to look for in the coming months include a teaser trailer (finally) as well as more descriptive movie poster. I then assume things such as video games and action figures, followed by a soundtrack featuring the latest "cool" bands. But who knows, I could be wrong (rarely happens).

Virtual Conference

Recently I listened to an online conference where speakers Todd Waserman, Alan Schanzer, and Barton Goldberg spoke about online social networks and they can help you by spreading brand awareness. Throughout the presentation I felt like a lot of the material was pretty much the majority of the stuff I have been learning in my internet marketing class. The three men talked about things ranging from Google, to Myspace, to Web 2.0 characteristics and how to use them to your advantage.

Todd started off the presentation with his presentation mostly highlighting numeral data that the companies are bringing in. The most interesting thing that Todd said for me was when he explained that despite all the hype about Facebook, Myspace is still the number one social networking site. For me, this seems unreal because I know a few people with Myspace, but literally everyone has Facebook. I think the important factor to keep in mind however is something Barton Goldenberg said in his presentation, just how many people are visiting the site though?

Mr. Schanzer's presentation was personally, for me, the most interesting. What I liked most about him was that he lead by example. He gave us some underlying features of social networks, and then explained how these helped certain companies with extending their brand awareness. He talked about the company E&J Brandy, who used social networking to set up a "Spoken Words" contest. The most interesting thing that Mr. Schanzer pointed out was the fact that everyone is so fascinated by these social networks, but a lot of people still don't even have internet. E&J Brandy fixed that problem by taking around a mobile van to African American communities and allowing them to record their 30-second spoken words spot and then upload it to the internet. This was a great idea because of the simple fact that now they had both the online and offline community involved with the brand.

Barton Goldenberg was the last speaker for the conference. I found his material to be pretty much the regurgiated matter of my great professor Kurt Komaromi. His entire presentation focused the Digital Client, who according to Goldenberg, is the Generation Y people who are "always on, always connected". He also talked about how great social networks are for businesses because not only are digital clients connected to your network and stores but they are also connected directly to you, the company.