Terminator: Salvation Goes All out for Marketing and PR Campaign
So that Christian Bale rant a few months ago, gave Terminator: Salvation some early buzz.
Now the real marketing machine is igniting, and it’s eminating a lot of smoke.
Contests
First there’s the advance screening contest (the courier-journal.com / Terminator Salvation Movie Contest) that’s being administered by some newspapers across the nation, mainly the Louisville, KY Courier Journal, which is giving out two passes to a fortunate reader to see the movie prior to its May 21st official release.
Star Inteviews
Sam Worthington, the new hunk in town gave an interview to ComingSoon.net prior to the movie’s release, and does a little promotion for the James Cameron movie Avatar as well. Nothing like killing two birds with one stone.
Movie Web marketing
No word on how long the movie’s custom made website has been active, but its flash-laden welcome screen features a battle scene from the movie, with Christian Bale’s character machine-gunning the T-600 Terminator.
The movie’s website color of choice is red and black, and after pressing OPEN MENU, it seems like it takes forever in Internet loading time for the actual menu to emerge.
The said menu includes 15 submenus, including video and gallery, a link to Skynet Research (huh?), and one for tickets and showtimes (that leads to a screen with a Activate Screen).
Movie Marketing Partnerships
Warner Brothers has apparently teamed up with a total of eight partners for the movie’s promotion, including Slim Jim, Visa, Pizza Hut, MyVu, XBox 360, and Oakley. Up to May 31st, those who visit 7-Eleven can get a collectible cup and straw featuring the machines from Terminator Salvation and can even try new Slurpee flavor from the convenience chain, Apocalyptic Ice. So after one has sampled it, will the Earth fall over?
Contests
With its partnership with Jeep, Warner Brothers is giving movie fans an opportunity to participate in its Jeep Summer Thrill in which the Grand Prize winner can win Grand 2009 Jeep® Wrangler Rubicon as well as a Family 4-Pack of tickets to aU.S. Six Flags® park. About fifty people have a chance of receiving a Family 4-Pack of tickets to any U.S. Six Flags park.
Up to 10 days after its initial release into theaters, Terminator: Salvation fans can also vye for a chance to instantly win an actual T-600 life-size Terminator, branded Xbox consoles and assorted prizes.
A lot of the cross-promotions seem to be male-slanted. Doesn’t the Terminator franchise have some female fans too?
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook: Blockbuster Money Troubles? + French Movie Audiences + University Students Screen Porn + and More
Movie Rental News
Is Blockbuster experiencing money troubles? According to the Wall Street Journal, the movie rental retail chain’s auditing firm PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP evaluation expressed some concern about its financial situation:
“Blockbuster’s financial situation raises “substantial doubt about the Company’s ability to continue as a going concern” or viable business. The company had warned investors last month that auditors were likely to raise those concerns.”
Observers like the NY Daily News, are predicting the demise of Blockbuster, while others are asserting that there is cause for alarm, but are no doubt waiting on further developments.
In a financial crunch environment where every industry—including the movie indsutry—is experiencing financial hardships, maybe there’s hope that Blockbuster will pull through.
International Movie Marketing
International films are gaining a streaming edge on the Internet. A string of Korean short films are now available on Rapid Share.
And if you’re talking movie marketing and PR, do think of one Edison Chen, please. Mr. Chen, a major movie star in Hong Kong was involved in a sexual scandal…or merely an awkward candid photo moment in a string of photos that leaked on the Internet (according to U.S. standards).
The actor ignored death threats from moral purists to get on the promotion trail for his latest movie The Sniper. Now that’s some really zealous movie marketing fervor.
French movie audiences are not apt to go watch a musical, according to a major French film director Christophe Barratier who tells the Boston Globe,
“French people are nervous about musicals. They say, ‘Oh no, will there be singing?’ ” He points out that Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge,” while being something of a worldwide phenomenon in 2001, wasn’t a big deal in France. And “Les Miz?” Un flop.
So why is he slapping them with the movie Paris 36?
Movie Business
Peter Bart, the longtime editorial helmer for trade paper Variety, has stepped down.
Veteran movie publicist William McLeod passed away at 50. During his lifetime McLeod orchestrated many successful publicity campaigns for Terry Hines and Associates, Strand Releasing, before starting his own firm. Condolences to his family.
Marketing Movies, Collegiate Style
While some studios are having meetings about how to develop a sure-fire plan to consistently grab college students’ attention, certain developments in collegiate movie screening land would lead one to note that the best method is to have some sexy content and let the students come to you. University of Maryland students screened a pornographic flick on campus in spite of warnings from campus censorship administrators. The UM students are claiming that they’re screening the porn flick not for their viewing pleasure but for the gratification of first amendment rights.
Movie Marketing and Publicity
So is that X Men Origins: Wolverine full movie 100,000 illegal downloads going to be detrimental to the movie’s scheduled May release? Probably not if you give credence to Mark Colvin’s post about the leak doing more good than harm.
So the cult classic Toxic Avenger is getting new life on Broadway.
Cable
Will cable become a relic of the past in years to come?
Still Credit: AMP
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
Movie Marketing
While its nemesis Netflix continues to gain subscribers, Blockbuster has lost $360 million in the fourth quarter, but like a real trooper it’s not planning on going down. The retail movie rental company is refinancing loans, tapping deeper into the video game business, and lower in-store video rentals. [AP]
Has Hollywood been pushing for movie piracy all along?[P2P]
And speaking of piracy, NBA star Yao Ming thinks he can help. [THR]
Ok, just one more thing about movie piracy. Is there a link to terrorism and organized crime? [SM]
Even marketers for DVD packaging of TV shows are going all out. [TSOD]
International
Filmart is the place for Europe’s films. [THR]
Legal
The movie Sahara, based on a book of the same name, was released back in 2005, but the legal quagmire ensuing from its release is continuous.
The latest is that the book’s author Clive Cussler was ordered to pay $13.9 million dollars in legal fees to Crusader Entertainment, the film production company behind the low-revenue film. Cussler originally sued the company for failing to consult him on the film; Crusader Entertainment had countersued soon afterwards claiming that the author had misled them about the book’s sales. [AHN]
Web Marketing
Wireless giant Nokia’s social networking site Mosh is going bye bye, although the official elimination date has not yet been announced. The move is surprising many tech pundits who find it hard to swallow that Nokia is letting go such a highly-trafficked web property (180 million downloads). Some reasons being speculated upon include Warner Music’s taking way music catalog privileges away from the cell phone company’s grasp for use on the site, as well as its increasing attention on its upcoming store chains Ovi.
When the sales get tough, the marketing gets going. Now even food marketers are going the viral route. [R]
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
Movie Marketing
Rapper T.I. denied that scandal-plagued singer Chris Brown was going to be excluded from Bone Deep’s marketing and PR materials. No, instead the movie is actually getting a new title. [MTV]
Have you heard of SpeedCine? It’s a website that offers a database of all movies that, you know, are available legally online. [CT]
International/Foreign Films
Hungary’s filmmakers are learning that there’s no place like home when it comes to film location. [NO]
Slumdog Millionaire has already made an estimated $250 million dollars in international box office receipts. Now, it’s headed towards China, where its universal story of triumph from poverty will definitely ring a bell there. [CBC)
A list of 5 foreign films that are getting tongues wagging at this year's SXSW. [DT]
Paris 36, a Sony Pictures film is being touted as the Best Foreign Film contender for the 2010 Oscars. [LAT]
Tech
Toshiba wants to make portable DVD players more stylish. [CG]
Should you pack up your standard DVD player in favor of the Blu-Ray disc player? You might want to read the Consumer Reports pros and cons first. [ABC]
Festivals
The winners of the Miami International Film Festival. [MH]
Paris 36 still via Fandango
Movie Marketing and PR Notebook
Technology
The Visual Effects Society may be good at deciphering innovative special effects in movies, but they’re not so zealous when it comes to marketing. [FXR]
International Cinema
Are you making an Irish film? How many of these vital ingredients does your future Irish film classic have?
Movie Marketing
Has Watchmen killed off the comic superhero movie sequel?
Social Networking
If you can’t beat them, or much less buy them, the solution is to join them. Sort of. Facebook’s offer to buy Twitter last year was met with a “Thanks, but no thanks”. Now Facebook is finding ways to live vicariously through Twitter…by ganking a lot of the micro-blogging platform’s features.
Not to be left out of the social networking game, Bebo has come up with Lifestream, a platform that will allow Beboists to compile all their updates from other social networks (such as Twitter and MySpace) into a single feed. [BR]
Facebook’s traffic is double of what it was last year. But the influx of traffic isn’t coming from who you might expect. [IW]
Web Marketing
How to upgrade your local search mojo.
Publishing
With the upcoming Thor, Spiderman 4, Transformers, scheduled for release in the next two years, some book stores are experiencing a comic book sales boom.
Legal
Sony is suing Twentieth Century Fox as well a World Rush over billboard agreement.
The Supreme Court has decided in the favor of “The Family Guy” in the lawsuit in which the “Wish Upon a Star” Publisher legally challenged the show’s producers using the classic song in what they viewed as a anti-Semitic reworking of the classic ballad. [AP]
Marketing Elsewhere
So where are all the television marketing directors?