| CASE STUDY FILM | Toy Story 3 | ||
| BUDGET | 200 million USD | ||
| BOX OFFICE | 1.067 billion USD | ||
| TYPE OF ADVERTISING
|
ADVERT/LINK
|
ANALYSIS (advertising techniques, ‘reach’) | |
| Posters | http://collider.com/3-new-toy-story-3-character-posters-woody-hamm-and-buzz/ | The first teaser poster was debuted at Disney’s D23 expo in 2009 and, while it’s not much, it is the first to sport the “No toy gets left behind” copy, hinting that the plot of this movie would once again revolve around an adventure to rescue one of the characters we’ve come to know in the first two movies.
A series of posters came out next, each featuring one of the main characters from the series interacting with the “3” logo. Rex, Oink, Buzz, Woody, Jessie, Slinky and Potato Head all get solo one-sheets with the same black background which creates a nice, uncluttered way to present the fact that all the favourites from the previous two movies are returning in this instalment. Later posters were designed to introduce some of the new characters in this instalment. Peas-in-a-Pod, Ken, Lots-o-Huggin’ Bear and all the other toys that populate the day care centre our main characters find themselves in. There was later a single image that brought all the new characters together with Buzz and Woody under the movie’s title. After that came a series of posters that featured the whole cast. Finally, a poster was released that placed the returning characters in front of a cardboard box that’s been tipped over. Everyone looks alternatively shocked and curious and this is obviously taken from the moment they’re first dropped off at Sunnyside day care.
|
|
| The Trailers | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcpWXaA2qeg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZv1vki4ou4 |
The movie’s first teaser trailer basically parades the movie’s cast in front of the camera before everyone comes back with a title. There’s not much to it, but it is charming and achieves the main goal of letting the audience know that there’s a new movie coming out and that the whole cast is back.
The first “real” trailer starts off basically where we last left these characters. Andy is playing with Buzz, Woody and the others in his bedroom and we then see a montage of clips that show he, unlike those toys, is growing up. That culminates with a now college-aged Andy looking at the toys of his childhood and then walking out of the room, clearly leaving his past behind. This teaser is effective at setting the mood of the movie and explaining its basic story points, but there’s still a ton going on that’s now shown and I’m guessing there’s little to nothing here from the last half of the film. Another trailer was then released, We start off once again with Andy preparing to go to college and selecting which toys are discarded, which are saved and which are brought with him. As his car drives down the street we see on the street, on signs along the road and in the car window that this movie comes from the studio that brought us Finding Nemo, WALL-E and Up. This one, though, doesn’t linger on the sentimental aspect but instead gets into the action. The toys find themselves at a local day care centre amid hundreds of others, an environment far different from Andy’s bedroom where they were treated with care and love. Here they are on unfamiliar ground and there may even be something sinister in the minds of the toys who are already there. This trailer is a little more action-packed and exciting and certainly seems to be designed more for the kids in the audience, where the previous one seemed to be geared more toward adults who would feel the nostalgia
|
|
| Internet | http://toystory.disney.com/toy-story-3 | The official website opens with a rotating stream of quotes from early reviews of the movie, all of which claims it an instant classic for the entire family, before giving way to one of the TV spots. At the bottom of the page there’s a button to enter the “Great Escape Giveaway”
When you Enter the Site, the cast of characters is arrayed in front of you and, as you mouse over each of them, you’re prompted to “Visit” that character. Doing so takes you to information about that character as well as Games, a 360-degree view of its design as well as Video clips, a Gallery of images. The News section is filled with promotional videos, mostly from Disney, talking about the film, some go into how the Pixar animators used real dancers to help choreograph sequences in the movie and such. The Gallery has 30 stills from the movie and the Posters section has all 24 promotional one-sheets, including the ones that have Buzz and Woody surrounded by the new characters, which are filled in one-by-one on successive images. All of these items are fully downloadable. Moving on, the “Games” section collects all the character-specific games that are under their individual profiles and includes a number of others that involve the whole or parts of the whole gang. A series of online videos were made that were much better than the internet-only spots from earlier in the campaign. The first was made to look like a vintage commercial for Lots-o-Huggin’ Bear that had been converted from a disintegrating VHS tape. This provided some background on when the toy was created in the movie’s world and is basically funny and entertaining, which is a good thing. The retro kept coming with a “Groovin’ With Ken” video of an interview with Ken talking about what a great life he leads despite the fact that on his own box his name is so much smaller than Barbie’s. Ken was also the star of a series of “Ken’s Dating Tips” videos that showed all the doll’s secrets to remaining popular with the ladies. |
|
| Advertising and Synergy | The revival of the movie also brought with it a revival of the toy line, with lots of new additions – mainly in the form of new characters from this latest instalment – and variations on the classic characters hitting shelves.
Those toys got the spotlight from Toys R Us, who created special Toy Story promotional spaces in their stores and setup a section of their website and put some of the aliens form the movie all over the site. Visitors who click three of them on the site will unlock exclusive content. Those who buy $25 of Toy Story merchandise in stores will receive a voucher for a movie ticket. Energizer batteries also wanted to give out free movie tickets to see Toy Story 3 or any other Disney movie to those who bought three packages of batteries. Kellogg also got involved with a promotion on boxes of their products that encouraged users to collect secret codes they could redeem for various movie-themed prizes. There’s also been plenty of traditional advertising done. A number of TV spots were created and have been running in the lead-up to the movie, most of which take the same basic idea of the trailers and created abridged variations on those themes. So some focus on the escape plot, some focus more on the day care centre and some on the emotional upheaval of Andy leaving for college and deciding the future of his toys. They all work in and of themselves. The character-specific posters also were repurposed as billboards and other outdoor ads.
|
||
| Media and Publicity | http://www.comingsoon.net/movies/news/536915-comic-con-disneypixar-introduce-toy-story-1-2-3-beauty-and-the-beast-3d-and-more
|
The Pixar crew did make an appearance at Comic-Con 2009 to not only drop the news that Michael Keaton would be joining the cast as Ken but also to talk about the re-release of the first two Toy Story movies in 3D, a tactic being taken on in part to get people back to thinking about the franchise before this third instalment hits theatres. That re-release got its own trailer, with the characters all of a sudden discovering just how exciting it is that they’re now appearing in 3D, a trailer that’s pretty fun in its own right for how it plays with the concept of something being 2D. There was also an internet-only trailer and a TV spot that had similar fun with the idea of these characters appearing in three dimensions. .
The full film was later screened at ShoWest 2010 for theatre owners and other exhibition executives The studio announced it would take the first 65 minutes – about half – of the movie to college campuses to screen what it was calling a “Cliffhanger Edition” of the film that was designed to get college kids, who were likely seven to 10 years old when the last movie came out, interested in this latest instalment. Hopefully, the strategy seemed to be thinking, giving them such an extended look at the new movie would get their interest up enough that they’d later buy tickets to the whole thing. That effort was promoted with flyers being up on college campuses asking if people would like to start working for Pizza Planet, the kiddie restaurant that’s been featured in previous movies. The movie got lots of other publicity, including high-profile looks at some of the new characters that would be featured in this instalment and more.
|
|
AS Theory 