I bloody love clever marketing.
I've always enjoyed looking at concepts and ideas that are a bit different. Things that make you stop and look, to quote C+C Music Factory "Things that make you go hmmmm". No jealousy just admiration for a job well done.
The recent 20th Century Fox/Marvel campaign around the launch of the film Deadpool 2 ticks this box for me. For those unfamiliar with the comic book world, where have you been??? It's been everywhere since the success of the first Iron Man and X-Men movies, Deadpool is a character from Marvel comics who's a little unconventional.
The character curses, is ultra-violent and most unusually breaks the fourth wall with the audience. The use of the character in promotional material allows 20th Century Fox, Disney (owners of Marvel) and their agencies to really try some interesting tactics. Just have a look at the gallery below of some of the content. Whether you like the style or not you have to admit it provokes a reaction:
The images are a collection of Deadpool 1 & 2 and I think they show a real flair for standout and thinking differently. Whether the film is any good or not they have certainly made a statement and as a marketer all you can hope for is that your campaign will have recall with the audience, this does that very thing.
The campaign for the second movie even pulls in David Beckham, who was mocked by the Ryan Reynolds masked character in the first instalment. This short video drew it's own PR and was highly shareable across social media.
Deadpool is not the only example of clever Marvel marketing. The Ant-Man films offer something a bit different as well and should be admired. The gallery below shows a small selection of some of the downsized advertising really playing on the premise of the film. Whether these worked as marketing materials I don't know but they certainly got shared and provide a great talking point and a fun PR piece for the franchise:
I think it's also important that studios don't try to be quirky for all movies either. Sometimes movies sell themselves to a degree due to their scale, 2018's Avengers Infinity War is a great example of this. But for the likes of Ant-Man and Deadpool who don't have the strongest pulling power and need a bit of support these campaigns show fantastic thinking and creativity.
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