Good to be here. Thanks to Mauricio for putting this together.
Been interested in the campaign for the Universal Film “Forgetting Sarah Marshall”. There was tons of chatter about it around LA when it first hit the majority of our billboards. If you’re in any major North American city, you were most likely exposed to outdoor media that looks like this:
The teaser campaign is a good example of simple transmedia storytelling.
Rumor has it the whole concept came about because the best scenes in the film were too risqué for American TV broadcast standards. So the marketing folks cooked up a clever way to get people to check out their restricted video trailer.
The result, an easy-to-access Alternate Reality Experience (ARE) that leaves anyone who follows the breadcrumbs with just a bit of conviction to a deeper connection to the content.
Here’s how it worked: All over town, there were billboards, subway signs, and bus posters like so...
Following the URL on the ad,
you’re taken to an inUniverse BLOG set up by Peter Bretter, the television music composer who's been dumped by Sarah Marshall. There, you can watch a short Access Hollywood-style video explaining how Peter got the money to plaster his ‘I Hate Sarah’ billboards all over town.
Clicking the most provocative link on the BLOG brings you to the "restricted" trailer site.
Digging deeper, they’ve filled out their characters, story, and world with some other sites like a faux NBC.com TV page for “Crime Scene” – Sarah Marshall's TV series and a Myspace page for Infant Sorrow, Aldous Snow's band. He's the Eurorocker Sarah's chosen over Peter.
Unfortunately, the follow-up to the teaser campaign probably left some disconnect between the catchy outdoor and the fact that they were really advertising a Judd Apatow-produced film that's getting a ton of critical love.
It opened this weekend in the US (April 18th) to the tune of $17.7 million dollars. Not the biggest Apatow opening ever. For comparison’s sake, here’s a list of some of his troupes' past opening weekends starting with the most recent release:
* Forgetting Sarah Marshall -- $17.7 Million
* Drillbit Taylor -- $10.3 Million
* Walk Tall: The Dewey Cox Story -- $4.1 Million
* Superbad -- $33 Million
* Knocked Up -- $30.6 million
* Talladega Nights -- $47 Million
* 40 Year Old Virgin -- $21 Million
* Anchorman -- $28 Million
Universal deserves credit for taking a creative risk and using their marketing money to deepen their narrative – especially for a comedy. If “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” ran away with the weekend (it came in second to "Forbidden Kingdom's" $21.4 Million), it could have proven a HUGE step in the direction of allocating future funds towards transmedia storytelling.
Other opporunities for success remain.
Rumor has it 42 Entertainment/Warner Bros' "The Dark Knight" ARG is up to 3,000,000 participants. If strong transmedia campaigns can be translated into box office dollars, it’ll provide content creators with a lot more opportunity to extend their narrative and ultimately deepen the relationships with the audience and their content.
Sony just launched a similar campaign for their upcoming release "Hancock". Judge for yourself here.