Movie Publicity

Movies are getting marketed everywhere these days, including the supermarket.

The marketing of a movie is almost as important as the movie itself. The best example of this is The Break Up. It is one lousy movie but due to it’s stars constantly being in the press it had a good opening weekend. Thus, even a bad movie can make money if the publicity for it works.

Before television the only publicity a movie ever got was from movie trailers being shown before other movies and the posters of coming attractions in theater lobbies. Movie stars sometimes made public appearances in support of their films, attending the premiere and getting their name in magazines and newspapers. Movie stars also appeared on radio programs to plug their movies.

Once television became popular stars pushed their movies on variety shows and in interviews. John Wayne even got a plug for his movie Blood Alley when he appeared on I Love Lucy. It is the one where Ethel and Lucy steal John Wayne’s foot prints from in front of Grauman’s Chinese Theater. In one scene Lucy tells The Duke how much she likes his new movie Blood Alley.

My brother Patrick, a serious Barbra Streisand fan, once went to see Tom Cruise’s All The Right Moves just because he heard that Streisand’s Yentl previews were being shown before the movie. In our current world of internet, movie trailers have found a whole new life. No longer do you just watch trailers at theaters or on television. If you want to see previews to an upcoming film you need to just look it up on the web.

Even if you do not surf the web or go to many films you will still know when a major film is about to be released merely by going to your local grocery store. In an attempt to saturate their films into the public’s conscience, movie companies now advertise their films on food products. Last year Hostess had King Kong banana flavored muffins. This year there is Pirates of the Caribbean M&Ms and Pirates of the Caribbean cereal. The movie with the most grocery product tie in is Superman Returns. You can find Brandon Routh as Superman on Pepsi products, Pasta Roni boxes, Lays potato chips, Cap N Crunch and Life Cereals.

Fast food restaurants have long had movie tie ins in their kids meals. Burger King was very successful with it’s Star Wars collectable series last year. McDonald’s is currently giving away toy cars from Cars in their happy meals. 7-11 has X-Men: The Last Stand as well as Superman Returns collectable cups free with purchase of a frozen drink.

Whether it is a movie preview, a movie star on a talk show or a picture on a box of cereal, publicity can make a film seem more important than it really is and definitely influence what people may want to see in theaters. At least that is what the film company publicity departments are counting on.