When Timothée Chalamet sported a giant ping pong ball on his head in a handheld-shot video shared on his socials in October, it was clear the “Marty Supreme” marketing campaign was going to be different.
Since then, we’ve seen an orange blimp in the sky, pop-up shops selling the trendy jackets brandishing the movie’s title, and Chalamet standing atop the Las Vegas Sphere.
It all led to A24’s most expensive movie ever, blowing past industry expectations for its opening weekend at the box office with over $27 million since Christmas Day.
What the “Marty Supreme” promotion has taught Hollywood is that movie marketing works, as long as you don’t do typical movie marketing. And moviegoers don’t even need to know what the movie is about before going to see it. (Be honest: All you knew was that Chalamet was playing ping pong.)
For decades, the playbook for releasing a movie has been along these lines: release an eye-catching trailer, develop a bunch of ads with critics and fanatics praising the movie, and have the stars do some interviews with major outlets and late-night shows. Sure, “Marty Supreme” did this, but that’s not what got audiences into theaters.
The “Marty Supreme” campaign worked because we could see how hard Chalamet wanted us to notice him, so we did. Whether it was him doing the “Crank That” dance in Brazil, hosting a table tennis tournament, or sitting alongside comic Druski on the latest episode of Coulda Been Records auditions, the star wasn’t just game to do it all; it felt like he was channelling a part of himself into ambitious marketing elements.
“If you can feel the labor, you become drawn to it,” Jackie Brenneman, president and CEO of Attend Theatrical Marketplace, told Business Insider.
The whole thing oozed an authenticity that left audiences not just entertained, but feeling it was their obligation to see the experience through by buying a movie ticket.
“It feels authentic. It feels — instead of A24 telling Chalamet how to market it, it’s Chalamet’s own brand of weirdness,” she continued. “And that’s endearing. At a point, you say, ‘That’s my Christmas movie. That’s what I’m going to see because look at how much fun he’s having!”
‘Marty Supreme’ also paid off because it created a moment
By pushing traditional marketing tactics into the background and crafting clever moments that went viral, “Marty Supreme” became this holiday season’s cultural moment. And it motivated many to visit their nearest theater to be part of it.
“People are going to ‘Marty Supreme’ so they can feel the version of themselves that gets it,” Brenneman said. “They get to look around the room and go, ‘Yeah, you get it, too.’ And that’s really powerful.”
“Marty Supreme” already had dedicated cinephiles hooked, thanks to the movie being made by acclaimed indie studio A24 and the writer-director being Josh Safdie, one half of the brother team that gave us arguably Adam Sandler’s greatest dramatic performance with “Uncut Gems.”
But with A24 dishing out around $70 million to make “Marty Supreme,” the largest budget ever for one of its movies, the studio needed its biggest splash yet to recoup. Film data analyst Stephen Follows says A24 achieved this by executing a “marketing-as-performance” campaign.
“Movie marketing is shifting from promotion to participation, particularly for original, star-driven projects that don’t have the built-in awareness of existing IP,” Follows told Business Insider.
Both Brenneman and Follows believe this type of marketing can be replicated, but there’s one element on which they disagree: the need for a star.
“It will be most viable for star-driven original movies where the star has enough cultural gravity to carry the event marketing,” Follows said.
However, Brenneman believes you can create a similar movement without a Chalamet-level star being involved.
“If you have an independent movie, you can release it in 20 cities, work with theaters in advance, and eventize it — surprise pop-ups, work with the most popular restaurants in those towns that match the vibe of your movie, make that community know that if they like this place, they will like your movie,” she said. “It is absolutely 100% not only replicable but also necessary.”
Regardless of how you approach it, it still requires effort. And for A24, that long rally paid off.
“Marty Supreme” is playing in theaters nationwide.
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