The week we all unravelled...🧵
Which entertainment brands got Threads right?
In this edition: Film brands on threads, a SKRULLS invasion and Tom Hanks’ takes Cokecaine..????
Unless you’re actor Michael Cera, and only own a flip phone to stay in touch with online life, you’ll know that Meta’s ‘TWITTER KILLER’ Threads app launched this week.
I did my duty as an *extremely online* person and signed-up, then immediately went on a stalk-athon of all the entertainment brands and film studios, big and small, to see how they would respond, (bearing in mind for these mega companies their small social teams had less than 2 days to plan how they would manage Threads!)
Never was there a more obvious indicator of which brand’s social media teams have creative authority and trusting CMOs, and which brands have crippling, risk-averse legal sign-off procedures that hamper any credible audience engagement.
(Reveal! Those brands were A24, Disney and Lionsgate - still no threads presence after 48 hours. The latter especially surprising given they are generally exemplary when it comes to social!)
I rounded up the “quick out the door” threads from the first 12 hours of the app’s existence which you can scroll through below ⬇️
The overall approach, considering there is absolutely no guidebook for Threads yet (we are all just Jack clutching onto his plank in the freezing waters on this one), was to self-reference a fan favourite film or show, and meme-ify it.
Hats off to Paramount Plus for their approach of tagging each and every one of their flagship show accounts in one go with individual memes, from the main Paramount + Threads account, creating a mass burst of engagement AND subliminally reminding audiences of the breadth of their offer.
A film marketing campaign I’ve been enjoying A LOT is for Disney +’s new Marvel show, Secret Invasion which focuses on a faction of shape-shifting aliens called Skrulls planning to invade the earth.
The REAL WORLD MARKETING campaign has been running stealthily, with a ‘hiding in plain sight’ stunt that plays heavily on the film’s core payload that Skrulls have, in fact, been infiltrating society for much longer than humans realise.
Weeks ahead of the show’s launch, the Marvel team had actors dressed as Skrulls walk by in the background of every day news broadcast items across key US locations.
At the time, barely anyone noticed. There was no announcement of the campaign, or explicit referencing.
As the campaign got closer to launch date, the marketing team seeded reveals of the campaign to select film gossip blogs prompting a flurry of fans to start searching online for “video evidence” of the Skrull invasion of earth and sharing the footage with friends causing a viral escalation just before the season premiere.
The concept hops successfully on the example set by the SMILE movie marketing team who placed actors in the crowd at large-audience sports games, and engineered their appearance on key TV broadcasts to create a viral reshare campaign.
HOLLYWOOD IN BRIEF:
Tom Hanks caught with Cokecagne 👀 (I’m just waiting for an LA bar to add this to their drinks menu)
Cillian Murphy FINALLY took up the #MissionAccepted challenge set by Tom Cruise to drive audiences back to cinemas this summer for Barbenheimer. And he looked about as excited to do it as you’d expect…
Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are taking an anti-marketing approach to the launch of their latest offering (I’ll be watching avidly)
The Barbie madness arrives in London in the most British way possible, with YET ANOTHER quirky brand partnership…