Razzie needs to have Worst Marketing award this year...

I need to think for a little while before I think what could be considered the worst marketed film of the year (it would have to be something that ended up being very well received, but flopped because the marketing materials didn't do a good job of exciting the audience).

But I do agree Paramount could have done a better job of marketing Star Trek Beyond, especially in light of the 50th anniversary. Maybe they should have taken some notes from Sony's marketing of Skyfall. Or even go back to their own history and see how they tied Star Trek VI's release with the 25th anniversary. Many years after its release, the Star Trek VI teaser is still a beautifully crafted celebration of the Enterprise's many previous adventures. I didn't hate the "Beastie Boys" teaser like a lot of people did, but they should have made a more celebratory teaser.

"If your life had a face, I would punch it." - Kim Pine

it would have be something that ended up being very received, but flopped because the marketing materials didn't do a good job of exciting the audience

Which pretty much sounds like Beyond, though I'd probably go for generally well received rather than very well. Along with Ben-Hur it's a film that from the very start the studio gave away the fact they had absolutely no confidence in it whatsoever and never recovered. The insane decision to almost completely sever it from the 50th anniversary (though its gone from most WW theaters by the time it rolled round) was truly infantile.

But then it's been a year of pretty bad campaigns:

- Ben-Hur: incredibly late out of the gate and never able to generate any interest, though in this case they were hampered by a bland cast and unimpressive footage. The pitch to the faith market looked like a last minute Hail Mary play, but one that took place in the car park five miles down the road rather than the stadium.

- Jason Bourne: shamelessly lifting taglines and poster designs from old Bond movies while slagging off the Bond films sends out pretty weird signals, but since the film itself was such a shameless cashgrab it was probably hard to come up with an original take to pitch.

- Ghostbusters: not so much for the way the Ghostgamergaters spun everything into completely misrepresentative soundbites but for that bland first trailer that failed to make that all-important good first impression the way similarly ridiculed and reviled during production films like Tootsie, Dances with Wolves, Titanic and Casino Royale did (all media jokes and whipping boys until the first trailers turned them around). Even a good trailer would have got a lot of hate - there's no way the trailer was bad enough to justify the suspicious number of hate it votes - but had they used the better international trailer first instead it probably wouldn't have got so much negative traction.

- Batman V Superman: like Beyond, a confused campaign that constantly changed direction and sales pitch with every trailer and increasingly marginalised Superman to make it look like a Batman movie because they know how to sell those. But as with the previous three, having a weak product that didn't know what it wanted to be would have challenged any marketing team.

- Gods of Egypt: DOA from that first teaser with unfinished CGi - with no inate pre-existing market for the material it's first impression was its last so that the better second trailer made no impression at all.

- The Legend of Tarzan: a mostly decent movie given a poor campaign that tried to sell it as The Dark Knight of jungle movies with grim, lifeless visuals and unfinished CGi that did the film no favors and felt like it was just being released as a contractual obligation when they'd have been better off stressing the old fashioned adventure angle the way The Jungle Book so successfully did. Yet the film still wildly overperformed the insanely low expectations (remember, this was a film almost everyone insisted wouldn't pass $100m WW and would be the next Pan), so something must have worked, though from the strong holds I think it has a lot more to do with being one of the few summer films to be better than its reviews or expectations than the campaign.

- Shin Godzilla: none of the trailers for this have been any good and the awful US one seems like an office injoke ("Hey guys, let's just use awkwardly lensed closeups of bit players overacting instead of Godzilla - go on, I double dare you!"), but despite making the film look cheap and the big feller look an immobile irrelevance it looks like the film itself is strong enough to still make a ton of cash (in Japan at least) anyway.


"Security - release the badgers."

You could add 'Pete's Dragon' to that list. This was a film that could have played well with adult audiences as well given the approach to the material it took, but Disney never tried to reach beyond the typical family/kids audience with their campaign.

http://www.the-fanboy-perspective.com/a-rant-against-modern-tentpole-film-making.html

I still think 'Star Trek Beyond' is a worse offender. I mean, Disney's lame marketing for 'Pete's Dragon' at least didn't hurt the reputation of the film itself while Paramount's marketing for 'Star Trek Beyond' arguably caused the film's reputation to collapse entirely.

I still think 'Star Trek Beyond' is a worse offender. I mean, Disney's lame marketing for 'Pete's Dragon' at least didn't hurt the reputation of the film itself while Paramount's marketing for 'Star Trek Beyond' arguably caused the film's reputation to collapse entirely.
Oh I agree very much. That first trailer had me baffled (even Simon Pegg couldn't resist dissing it).

http://www.the-fanboy-perspective.com/a-rant-against-modern-tentpole-film-making.html

Of course, Pegg was a big part of the marketing problem - telling Trekkers to *beep* themselves and going on about turning it in GOTG meets Ocean's 11 hardly got things off to a flying start after Paramount had just got rid of the original writer-director who had told them the same thing on his blog.


"Security - release the badgers."

Batman V Superman: like Beyond, a confused campaign that constantly changed direction and sales pitch with every trailer and increasingly marginalised Superman to make it look like a Batman movie because they know how to sell those. But as with the previous three, having a weak product that didn't know what it wanted to be would have challenged any marketing team.

Sadly, I think the proof is in the pudding (the pudding of, er, opening weekends) that this strategy demonstrably worked, even if we can debate how many of those millions were going to see the film regardless.

Star Trek almost certainly qualifies, since it's very clear that Paramount gave up on chasing that casual audience that they put a lot of effort into getting onside for the previous two films. Indeed, it's actually done worse than an adjusted First Contact, opening and all, which is pretty rough going.

Shut it, Love Actually! Do you want me to hole punch your face?

As we'd say whenever in a meeting, marketing can buy you an opening if you spend enough, but if it does from the first monday it's down to the film itself.


"Security - release the badgers."