We were lucky enough to get invited to the pre-screening of Role Models, which comes out…we dunno when…but it was funny in that Paul Rudd plays the biggest ass, and Sean William Scott busts out the tried-and-true idiot. Oh wait, it says it right there on the ad. November 7th is the big day people. Have a drink or three and check ‘er out.
Back to advertising, we’re happy to see the campaign took a simple step to getting at us. See the above exhibit, and click continued to get the rest of what we saw while cruising through the Times Square hell that is the subway.
Seeing the ads after the movie made us like them more than previously. But we attribute that to a phenomenon we call the “hey that’s the same car I’m driving” effect. Here’s how it works: ever notice that when you sit behind the wheel of a car that’s new to you — whether you bought it or borrowed it from a friend or rented it — when you begin driving this previously foreign vehicle (not in the Eurpoean sense — in the ‘this is new to me’ sense), you notice other cars like it everywhere.
That’s what our experience was like. We saw the movie, then saw the ads and because we enjoyed ourselves at the film, we got all excited about the posters. It’s an important aspect of branding we tend to forget about. It’s just important to make the customer feel happy after they’ve bought the product as it is trying to get them to purchase it to begin with. See why, after the jump.
More: “Martin Scorese Interrupts Your Movie”
Why is this important? Well for instance, if your customer is a blogger and they can loosely relate your product to their blog…you get our point. But for the other 5 billion people you’re trying to attract, consider word of mouth a good enough reason to always do good work. The just-released Zack and Miri Make a Porno which gained a lot of attention because its title includes the word “porno”.
(ed’s note: we’re not saying this is “good” work. But we noticed it, and it is a reminder of the laughter we experienced in that theater. In that way, the campaign worked as planned.)
Hell, Gossip Girl does the same thing, playing on the media’s criticism of the program in display ads. Genius. OK, we’re getting a bit off topic. The point is, I walk through Times Square every day and until last night didn’t notice the Role Model ads. Now that I’ve had the Kool-aid, the product feels familiar and I want to extol its relative goodness. In this case, “need a laugh? see this movie.”
And who doesn’t need a laugh? You do, after reading this unfunny post about a fundamental idea that you’ve probably been aware of for years.