With just a week left to before “Avatar” hits theaters, Fox is going for broke.
With almost overwhelming promotional force, the last-minute campaign is becoming so complete that you’ll be hard-pressed in the next few days to miss something hyping Cameron’s new film.
It’ll be in fast food restaurants, on TV, in travel contests, on soda cans, on cell phones and, of course, all over the internet -- from YouTube to specially created corporate and viral sites.
It would be an exaggeration to say “Avatar” is riding on the back of as many significant promotion partners as there are special effects in the film. But not much of one.
McDONALD’S
Speaking on a webcast from the U.K. Thursday, just before “Avatar’s” world premiere in London, Cameron said he hoped the “McDonald’s consumer is going to feel that they are part of the movie when they go into the restaurants.”
Speaking on a webcast from the U.K. Thursday, just before “Avatar’s” world premiere in London, Cameron said he hoped the “McDonald’s consumer is going to feel that they are part of the movie when they go into the restaurants.”
Having done promotional partnerships with Fox in the past on films such as “Night at the Museum” and “Ice Age 3,” McDonald’s seems to be going all out on “Avatar” starting this week.
“We’ve created the biggest ever digital promotion for McDonald’s,” Mary Dillon, McDonald's global chief marketing officer, told TheWrap. “There are not that many entertainment opportunities that are global in nature, ‘Avatar’ is.”
Having already launched a Twitter sweepstakes contest, the fast-food company will be all “Avatar,” all the time until January, with a campaign that starts the day the movie opens.
In-restaurant packaging and promotions are just some of the "Avatar" enticements McDonald's plans to roll out.
Among them: eight collectible “Thrillcards” that use an augmented-reality technology called McD Vision to take consumers into the movie’s alien world of Pandora; online game PandoraQuest; and the online interactive experience of PandoraRVR, which lets you "drive" through the alien world.
Both PandoraQuest and PandoraRVR are accessed via the McDonald's website.
With most of its 32,000 stores in 100 countries around the globe participating, the company has already launched region-specific campaigns and advertising in Latin America, Asia, Australia and Europe.
Neil Golden, McDonald's U.S. chief marketing officer, told TheWrap there is a method to the apparent madness of the company’s effort. “Simple. We’re aligning with the movie break to take advantage of the excitement building around it. There are tactical opportunities to further energize our Big Mac brand. And we’re bringing to them more people to experience the movie outside the theater.”
FOX
You would expect a Fox film to be heavily promoted on News Corp. properties. But you might not have expected the “Avatar” subplot on this week’s Fox hit series “Bones.” The show prominently wove in an “Avatar” storyline that saw several characters -- including intern Colin Fisher, played by Joel Moore, who is in “Avatar” -- lining up to get tickets to the film's opening day. (See photo at right.) Scenes from the movie appeared on screen, along with dialogue calling it "so much more than a movie.”
You would expect a Fox film to be heavily promoted on News Corp. properties. But you might not have expected the “Avatar” subplot on this week’s Fox hit series “Bones.” The show prominently wove in an “Avatar” storyline that saw several characters -- including intern Colin Fisher, played by Joel Moore, who is in “Avatar” -- lining up to get tickets to the film's opening day. (See photo at right.) Scenes from the movie appeared on screen, along with dialogue calling it "so much more than a movie.”
