The Materialists
📁 Filed under: Things I wish I’d thought of
Going into this you need to know that I am both a film nerd and a marketing nerd.
Proceed.
I’m seeing The Materialists tomorrow night, which I consider both a business expense and a routine girlhood-checkup. cc: my accountant.
Quick question, is this movie just Celine Song stoking the fire to bring back Team [Chris] vs Team [Pedro] after it laying dormant since the Twilight saga ended?
Pitched to us as “ROMCOMS ARE BACK BABBYYYY”, is turning out to be a deeper, realism-through-sattire look at relationships and dating.
It’s extremely hard to avoid spoilers despite it only being a week since it premiered, so the movie has alas been spoiled for me which is a shame.
From a hot and unbothered angle, we NEED to talk about the movie marketing.
Movie marketing has changed A LOT in the last few years, and from my opinion, the Barbie movie changed the game for cinema advertising. It has stopped being official press junkets, a trailer and a premiere to now - thinking outside the box and flood everyone’s phones with mini and massive moments of marketing. Yummy.
The New York Dating Exchange
You can’t tell me I wasn’t working in finance in a previous life because this activation TICKLED ME PINK.
Before the film’s premiere, A24 launched menofny.com, where men could input their stats (such as age, income, height [actual], location, icks and turn ons)
The responses will feed into a live, real-time ticker ranking these men’s stock value. [ICYMI they’re saying dating is transactional]. The data appeared on screens at the New York Stock Exchange and billboards around New York.
The reason I love this so much as it’s interactive and IRL, and the activation’s target audience is not the movie’s target audience.
When movies tease out the romcom genre, we collectively assume it’s a movie for women and the marketing is aimed the same.
However, creating this moment of “find out your stock in the dating market”, pulling at egos, creating something for the MEN to participate in that directly relates to the themes of the movie?So so good.
Someone tell Ollie H that unfortunately if you’re turned on by nice feet, knees are probably going to be involved.
Is your date reaaalllly 6 feet tall?
Some theatres received a standee (those cardboard free-standing things in cinema lobbies) from A24 to promote the film that acts as a ruler to measure if your date is really the height they say they are. 🤨
Iconic.
Honorable Mention:
The trio’s (Dakota Johnson, featuring my husbands Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans) press tour has been nothing short of iconic as they embraced modern content, appearing as their chaotic good selves on a variety of channels, really teasing out their chemistry as a threesome.
Takeaway: How can you take your marketing and create mini and massive moments? One of my favourite topics on FounderTok at the moment is ‘founders: what is your most unhinged way you’ve gotten customers? The comment section is my favourite thing bc founders are nothing if not resilient and resourceful. I remember seeing a tiktok years ago of an Onlyfans creator who made BUSINESS CARDS and slid them under fences at construction sites (she knows her market) and had a huge uptick in subscribers.
If you’re sitting on unhinged ideas but no one to hype them up or help you shape ‘em into strategy (or you just need someone to tell you you're not crazy for wanting to market your offer via foot pics or a fake stock exchange), my Hottie Hotline is open. A month-by-month subscription of support. Spicy, smart feedback and content voice notes straight to your WhatsApp. Just 3 spots left right now.