As the content and brand messaging worlds coalesce upon a cluttered marketplace, the competition for attention for leisure time entertainment means the same old tricks simply won’t sell.
Good.
The legacy entertainment companies, faced with decreased ticket and album sales — and a decreased priority in our culture, given the rise of mobile, gaming and social media — are trying some new things with Anchorman 2, and we could all learn a lesson of how to reboot an old marketing model with new tricks.
In my experience, we almost always let the talent in our marketing campaigns set the engagement terms at the smallest denominator possible. We get a full-day; maybe 1.5. Or for a year-long campaign, maybe 5-10 days over 12 months. And you better not ask them to tweet something that’s not in the contract, meet with a blogger, or do a YouTube video shout-out if it wasn’t line-itemed in the addendum.
And why should they? They are being paid for a turn-key experience.
In the case of Anchorman 2, the talent is fully immersed in the experience over the long-term beyond the typical late night talk show tour — including unique native advertising experiences, social media gamification, user-generated content, animated gifs on Tumblr, and hello – did you see that Dodge Durango spot (Dodge Durango sales have increased by 59 percent since Ron Burgundy started appearing in ads)?
Of course, Will Ferrell and his cast mates have way more to gain from supporting the campaign over the long-term than a paid endorsee does when doing a satellite media tour or product endorsement. And there’s a lesson there for marketers, too. The more skin in the game, the harder the talent will try and the more they will give. Then we have to give them the opportunity to do more – beyond SMTs and paid tweets.
Kudos to Paramount for raising the bar and engaging their talent beyond the traditional.
For us, now that they’ve executed all of these new strategies, these should be off the table. The next film, marketing strategy or PR campaign we tackle needs to raise the bar again, innovate further and help us get even further away from the lazy tactics that for sure are DOA in today’s cluttered culture.
Will Ferrell’s Anchorman 2 Is Changing the Way Movies Are Marketed | Adweek.
GREG SWAN 