When Unusual Marketing Schemes Work

Cover Design by Esther Kim

When Unusual Marketing Schemes Work

By Hailey Young

Movie advertising has been hit hard since the pandemic, but the stars are finding new ways to keep audiences engaged. Marty Supreme, the box office hit about a ping-pong player in the 1950s, featuring Timothee Chalamet, has some of the year's best marketing tactics. From standing on top of the Sphere in Las Vegas to getting Marty Supreme jackets on some of the most influential people in the world, Marty Supreme has changed the game for movie marketing.

While the movie industry as a whole has been able to bounce back post-COVID, with Fandango at Home, Apple TV, and HBO Max, the advertising has gone awry. Some of the most prominent actors are coming out with new projects, but the public, or at least a very media-centered 21-year-old like myself, hasn’t heard a thing. TikToks, Instagram posts, and YouTube trailers are no longer enough. We are far too used to getting our information this way. Almost everything on these platforms will turn into a “rot-session,” making new information forgettable in a matter of seconds. Movie productions need to make a spectacle of themselves and their well-known actors to make their marketing a hit.

Chalamet’s 19-minute Instagram reel of his “marketing plans” for Marty Supreme was hysterical. From picking his nose to having folders on his laptop titled “World Domination 2030,” the well-known actor was able to captivate his audience. While the whole thing was a skit, it was clipped to well-known quotes that Chalamet fans still talk about today. The biggest quote, “Marty Supreme Christmas Day,” no longer referred to an Instagram reel but became a broader marketing tactic for the film.

The Marty Supreme jackets showed another way to engage fans. From Tom Brady to Britain’s Got Talent Susan Boyle, the jackets were everywhere. They came in 8 viral colorways, customized for different events around the world. Everyone wanted a jacket, and if you claimed you didn’t, you were lying. The jackets didn’t just promote seeing the movie, it promoted the message: “Dream Big.” Chalamet gifted the jackets to those who dreamt as big as they could and made an impact. You didn’t have to be the best, but you sure did have to think you could be one of them. Inspiring fans through clothing has been done before, but not in this way. This was different than concert merchandise and celebrity clothing brands; this was a message. A message to be great, even if you didn’t end up watching Marty Supreme. These jackets reached millions of people, even people who were not inherently Timothee Chalamet or ping-pong fans. Chalamet appeared on Druski’s YouTube channel, which is an online sensation. Druski’s audience is mainly men, and this was another way for Chalamet to expand his audience.