posted by on June 22, 2008 at 11:20 AM
filed under:
Entertainment
Michel Gondry is one of my favorite directors, made
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (loved it, genius) and
Science of Sleep (liked it, very sweet) and, most recently, and a movie I just watch on
PPV last night,
Be Kind Rewind (rough start, a bit sentimental). The story of Be Kind Rewind, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is about a flailing local video rental shop where all the tapes have been erased and in order to keep making money Jack Black and Mos Def remake all the movies. Their remakes are of course more interesting and popular than the originals and they save the store from closing its doors.
Okay, decent premise, and the movie was okay but all I really wanted to do was see the movies that Jack Black and Mos Def had made. Remakes of Ghostbusters, Lion King, Men in Black. Where are these movies? Of course I was hoping they would be on the
website but instead there was a too-cool-for-school site about erasing the internet. Hrmpf. I then went on YouTube and found a
branded site built so that everyone else can make and post their own remade films. Yikes. I don’t want to watch some idiots’ remake of
No Country for Old Men, I really just want to see Jack Black doing Bill Murray.
This made me think about film marketing. Why wouldn’t Michel Gondry post all the remade films online before Be Kind Rewind was even released? It would have created significant buzz. I would have sent a Ghostbusters film with Jack and Mos to all my friends asking if this was for real. It would have made me want to see the film. He should have taken a lesson from
The Blair Witch Project and
Cloverfield and used the web to do all the marketing be pre-releasing all remakes, ahead of time, untethered. It certainly would have done more than $4MM on opening weekend (and $12MM overall). And, more importantly, I wouldn’t have to wait for the
DVD.
posted by on April 29, 2008 at 03:17 PM
filed under:
Entertainment
Good article in
MediaWeek about the use of web for delivering promotional ideas. I think this is going to explode. Promotion agencies should invest in digital knowledge and/or partnerships.
I wish I had the web when I was a client at Miller in the mid-90’s. We did this crazy program called the
MGD Blind Date. It was series of secret concerts held once or twice a year where winners of radio contests across the country were flown into a city, put on a bus, taken to an unannounced venue and then tightly packed in front of a dark stage. Suspense would build and then the lights would come on and David Bowie would be standing there singing Fame. (We had some good bands like
the Cure and
RHCP and the Foo Fighters and some now embarrassing bands like Bush.) It was a successful program and gave Miller a leg up in the critical on-premise. Anyway, the key to this idea was speculation. Who is the band? We wanted rumors to run wild in bars across the country. In order to make sure that happened, we had to spend $10MM in media including radio advertising. It worked, but it was a sizable gamble and eventually Miller couldn’t bear the risk (although it was one of the longest runing programs in beer history).
ANYWAY, my point of this story is that if I were to do the MGD Blind Date today, I would unapologetically use the web to propagate the rumors and substantially reduce the cost of this program. I hope that begins to happen and marketers start taking more chances and make the world a bit more fun.
posted by on February 28, 2008 at 03:43 PM
filed under:
Entertainment
The Big Word Project:
Two dudes who are going to make a lot of money very quickly. I just gave them $19.
UPDATE: Look who nabbed president.
posted by on December 01, 2007 at 12:00 AM
filed under:
Entertainment
N.B. This post was from the last version of our site
Hello all! We just launched the new website for the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City. The first new Museum construction in decades in New york City, and it was architected by the Pritzker Prize winning Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa for Saana, in their first US construction. The museum opens to the public today, and you should go check it out. We popped into the opening gala last night and can assure you the museum is beautiful and the art is uncompromising. You can read about the museum and the exhibit here and here.
It’s an honor to have taken part in the re-launch of this famed institution, and we look forward to our continuing relationship with the Museum and Droga5, our friends and their brand agency.
Additionally, 2 weeks ago we launched a new reality entertainment website in partnership with The Junior High Men in San Francisco. It’s called The 2 Husbands and we are completely in love with the idea and the site. Enter to win the opportunity to marry either Zach or Tanner, and win $50,000. Yes, you can really marry them. We also got a great writeup in the UK’s Guardian this week. You can read that here
posted by on September 28, 2007 at 01:57 PM
filed under:
Entertainment
Hey check out this awesome trailer on the home page of YouTube today for Motorola. Yeah man. Ninjaphones. This is a trailer for a site we did, and short films by us and Nicole from Paranoid and Sebastian from
H20. Woo. It’s gonna rock.
here is the permalink.Oh and the wicked awesome accompanying site we did is
here. It’s pretty fly.
on June 22, 2008 at 11:20 AM
