Fresh

LAIKA’s first full-length movie, Coraline, finally hit the theaters on February 6th to a lot of fanfare and high expectations (especially in Portland). The response from the public on opening weekend definitely gave the Portland animation studio reason to take a deep breath, relax and open a cold one (or 3). The movie came in at #3 in the box office for the weekend and raked in quite a bit more money than was expected.  I got a chance to see it in glorious 3D last Monday, after missing out on a couple showings over opening weekend that were sold out.  Showings were also sold out Monday evening. A word to the wise, if you’re planning on seeing this movie any time soon within the Portland area, get there REALLY EARLY.

Much of the success of the movie’s opening weekend is certainly due to the clever PR campaign ran by Wieden & Kennedy in the few months leading up to the big day.  W+K approached the marketing for Coraline with a multi-faceted approach, doing a few things that movie marketers had never done before – or at least, had never done incredibly well. Check out the laundry list of marketing deeds undertaken by W+K as described on their blog.

One of the really innovative ways they got the hype machine rolling was by sending out 50 totally unique “mystery boxes” to bloggers – each containing a personalized letter (sealed with wax and a big black button), photos and various ACTUAL props and pieces of puppets that were used in creating the film.  They sent these boxes out to animation fans, stop-motion fans, Neil Gaiman fans, Night Before Christmas fans, crafters, writers, people into ‘creepy stories’ – you can tell they really put some thought into who should get them.  The ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive blog has a roundup of all the boxes they could find blog posts for.  I noticed that the Starlight Foundation got one too – giving them a cool way to raise money by selling it on eBay.

I don’t want to go on and on about all the other way-cool techniques W+K used – I want to focus on their web campaigns – but I do want to mention these crazy interactive storefront displays and the limited edition Coraline Nike Dunks.  Wow.

W+K really hit the mark with their online efforts. Like the rest of the PR campaign, they captured the mysterious, creepy feeling of the movie – and let the public take part in the adventure.  But beyond just hinting about what the movie was going to be about, they also wanted to showcase the process and the people behind the stop motion work.  In this age of digital animation there are probably a lot of people not familiar with the painstaking, detailed work required for stop-motion animation.

Teaser Website

On the teaser website (launched while the movie was still in production) you could view several mini-documentaries on how various parts of the movie were made. BUT – you couldn’t just go to the website and see a gallery of thumbnails for all the videos.  That’d be way too easy and boring.  Instead, you’d see a screen with a keyhole, and be prompted to ‘enter key’.

Remember those 50 mystery boxes sent to bloggers all over the globe?  Several of them contained keys attached to tags with “Coraline dot com” and a password (photo on the left from Despoiler). Of course the bloggers posted photos of their mailed treasures so pretty soon the passwords were being passed around the interwebs via blogs, tweets and forum posts.

The sense of mystery and the peek into to the miniature world of Coraline created a huge buzz about the movie – way more than some traditional kids’ movie trailer or cheesy poster (that doesn’t capture the mood of the movie at all).

Full Website

On the current Coraline.com site (Flash-o-phobes beware) you can explore the world of the movie in almost-3D (there’s a cool parallax effect as you move your mouse around).  There are little tab links to the trailer, showtimes and info about the movie and actors – but the focus is on the interactive world of Coraline.

Compare the site to a similar Flash site done for the movie at Focus Features (the distributor for the movie), launched while the film was still in production. It has a lot of similar elements to the current Coraline site, but you have to navigate through the site by clicking on the links at the top of the page (Story, Characters, Video, Downloads, etc).  The black cat from the movie pops up on the homepage and gives you some instructions.  I liked the cat in the movie, but don’t really need him to tell me how to use the website.  He wants you to mouse around the site trying to find various “secret items”, which appear on the bottom of your screen as you find them.  I completed this rather tedious task, and what did I get for all my work?  A pretty crappy wallpaper. The other offerings on the site aren’t much better.  A few more not-great wallpapers, and a couple of online games and a plug for the Coraline video game.

I don’t mean to harp on that site, it really is pretty well done, and obviously provided some inspiration for the main Coraline.com site.  But really, it’s a good thing W+K came along and injected it with some life, and of course, mystery.  As you’re poking around and exploring the site, instead of ’secret items’ you get behind-the-scenes photos and videos, some much cooler wallpapers and downloadables, and several opportunities to interact and create.  You can upload a photo and “button your eyes” (my cat Toby made the one on the right), create your own flower in the garden, have jumping circus mice spell out your name – and of course you can download and save your creations or post them on Facebook or MySpace.

Alright, so I usually don’t post random things to my Facebook page, and I never really click on things other people post. So at first I thought “who cares about this silly purple flower I made?”  But nonetheless I named it “Boo Flower” and posted it to my Facebook profile.  Within 10 minutes a friend of mine had commented on it, and (I assume) went to the website to create their own flower.  She probably didn’t know too much about the movie before, and this got her intrigued enough to check it out.  Now she has more of a feeling for what the movie is all about.  Or at least that there are weird looking flowers in it!  What do you know, “Share This” functionality really does work!  Especially when you share something you created yourself.  And especially when the interface for creating the content is intuitive, fun and beautiful.

One last note – want a chance at winning those cool Coraline Dunks?  Check out Coraline’s room.  And don’t forget to see the movie.  The WHOLE movie.

Other Online Advertising

One other brilliant marketing decision by W+K was using the character, Bobinsky, as the online personality of the movie – he has his own blog, and is the star of their online ads.  While the rest of the online campaign tries to keep with the creepy tone of the story, Bobinsky lightens things up and shows the lighter, funnier side of the movie.

This banner ad is just hilarious:

LAIKA & Wieden and Kennedy = a match made in animation heaven

W+K will surely be up for some awards for this entire marketing effort.  By allowing some mystery in their campaign they piqued the public’s interest and generated a lot of buzz before the movie’s release.  And it definitely paid off.  W+K proved that you don’t have to buy a Superbowl ad to have a successful marketing campaign.  You don’t have to hold the public’s collective hand (it’s a large hand) or shove the information down their throats either.  As long as you put a lot of effort into each and every last detail, just plant a few seeds out there and let the people discover the awesomeness for themselves.

What are you waiting for? Don’t let that awesome PR go to waste! Go see Coraline!

Tore thinks you should see it, too.  Don’t you Tore?