Promoting Wes Anderson
Another Wes Anderson movie is COMING SOON, and I can't wait to see it.
The French Dispatch (of the Liberty, Kansas Evening Sun) had its debut at Cannes this summer and will be released in American theaters on 10/22/21.
As a consumer, I love Anderson's kooky-but-careful films for their casting, sets, costumes, cinematography, music and of course quirky stories.
As a marketer and disseminator of media products, I appreciate how difficult Anderson’s movies are to compress into promotions.
So, today’s challenge will be to reverse-write the brief to try to gain some insights into how it is done.
Let’s start with three key artifacts - the trailer, the poster and the soundtrack.
The YouTube trailer is narrated in the same voice as the film, and intercut with scenes from each of its three stories.
It starts with a fairy-tale opening.
"It began as a holiday ... Eager to escape a bright future on the great plains, Arthur Howitzer Jr. transformed a series of travelogue columns into The French Dispatch ... "
This is followed by cuts featuring the world's favorite actors, Benicio del Toro, Frances McDormand, Jeffrey Wright, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Timotheé Chalamet, Léa Seydoux, Owen Wilson, Mathieu Amalric, Lyna Khoudri, Stephen Park, Bill Murray.
Showing a little of the product (but most of the actors) is a good way to capture the interest of a lot of different potential audience cohorts, especially given the global casting of a film like this one.
Next, the promotional poster.
Illustrated by Javi Aznarez, it borrows from famous French film posters of yore. For example, the Mon Oncle films starring Jacque Tatti.
It names the actors and presents their characters all in one take, in a three-story building in Paris, like the three stories in the movie.
The illustration style is deliberately shaky cartoon-ish, like the film sets themselves.
The perfect movie poster. It reflects the film faithfully, and adds something.
Finally, the soundtrack.
The music for this film was scored by Alexandre Desplat and supervised by Randall Poster.
Desplat has worked with Anderson on every film since The Fantatic Mr. Fox and his musical themes for the individual characters and locations are always so additive. His re-works of familiar tunes to fit the film are also a petite merveille.
It’s like a compilation soundtrack of originals, if that makes any sense. Recognizable tunes that you’ve never heard before.
Like the poster, only sonic. You know it. You like it. Yet, you’ve never heard it before.
So what was the marketing brief?
Maybe something like …
Make it feel new (it is Andrerson’s NEW movie) but make it feel safe (seasoned actors, familiar poster style, soundtrack of re-makes).
Feature the diversity of the talent. Faces and names.
Jazz it up by sampling as much of the soundtrack as possible.
But don’t show too much because there are three months between the standing ovation at Cannes (late July) and when tickets go on sale (late October).
Easily observed, difficult to do.
