The Coraline Campaign: LAIKA & Wieden+Kennedy are a match made in heaven
Monday, February 16th, 2009
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.
