One way to roughly estimate the cost of a major motion picture is to take the production budget and double it. Why double it, you ask. Well, that extra cost is to promote the damn thing.
Movie promotions come in all shapes and sizes. Billboards. Exciting trailers. Fast-food tie-ins. Then you have the most tried and true fashion of selling a film: cheesy promotional merchandise. Let’s explore.
The Good
Deciding what promotional merch will work best to get people excited about your movie is much easier when the movie in question contains something iconic. Take for example the eye-catching scissors from Jordan Peele’s Us.
Academy voters received replica scissors as part of the movie’s “for your consideration” campaign. While the film failed to earn Peele another Oscar, sending out prop scissors is a winning idea.
Keeping with the theme of outstanding horror films, we have this replica cricket bat featured in Edgar Wright’s Shaun of the Dead. As far as promotional merch goes, this is another six (which is what they call a home run in cricket).
I realize thus far that I’ve only praised weapons featured in movies. That’s not really surprising, as I own the knife from Crocodile Dundee. Not the actual knife, but, you know. Here that is.
Moving on, we have another piece of promotional merch that is as iconic as it is simple: the soap from Fight Club. Although the first and second rules of Fight Club may be “You do not talk about Fight Club,” that didn’t come from the folks in marketing. It remains unclear if this soap is rendered from liposuctioned human fat, but it’s probably best not to know.
Next we have these cool carabiners that were sent out to promote spelunking horror fest The Descent and the Swiss Army knife promoting The Blair Witch Project. These are just simple yet effective ways to market your movie without breaking the bank.
Rounding out the successful promotional entries in this list, we have this packet of There’s Something About Mary hair gel. Ask anyone about this movie and you’ll most likely hear mention of the scene where Cameron Diaz (our Latin Queen) mistakenly rubs ejaculate through her hair. The world was different then. It’s difficult to explain.
The Not-So-Good
You know we’re headed into strange territory when the spunk hair gel is in the wins column. Starting out we have this youth slang translation tool to promote the movie Encino Man. This reminds me of the time a former Sub Pop employee was interviewed by a New York Times reporter looking to write about Grunge speak. Since this wasn’t really a thing, the Times ended up running a completely made-up list of terms and definitions. I for one think it would be great to describe “hanging out” as “swingin’ on the flippity-flop.”
Next we have this weird hand thing for the Thing hand in The Addams Family. I don’t know what this is supposed to be. You put your fingers through the little holes and then what? Look like an asshole?
As the sequel to a Best Picture winner, Red Dragon had a lot to live up to. A clear sign of just how large the shadow of Silence of the Lambs loomed over its successor is the promotional foodstuffs that accompanied the film’s release.
Remember when Hannibal Lecter casually references eating a census taker’s liver with fava beans and a nice chianti? Well, here’s some tins of food with a Red Dragon sticker clumsily slapped on them. This really serves as a great visual metaphor for so many unsuccessful sequels that repackage elements from the original film with little understanding of what made it work in the first place.
Now for a different type of mental evaluation. What do you think about when you think about the movie Robocop? If branded writing utensils is your answer, then perhaps you need to go have a lie down.
For our final entry, we have a marketing decision so baffling that it personally offends me. I was so hyped for the release of the Matrix sequels that I would have fought a dog in the street for anything even tangentially tied to the franchise.
At the same time, I doubt I would have been over the moon to receive a Matrix Reloaded desk set, complete with pencil holder and a framed picture of Neo. I envy the executive with enough self assurance to proudly display this Matrix desk set for all of their colleagues to see.
The team behind this could have taken the easy way out and just gave everybody some knockoff Oakleys or whatever. But no. Executive desk set. Incredible.
If you’re interested in a deep dive into more promotional merch, I highly recommend you check out the Twitter account Movie Promotional Merch Unlimited at @NightPromoting. There you’ll find a regularly updated feed full of movie merch odds and ends. If you’re inspired to browse eBay for movie merch to add to your own collection, just remember one thing: You can never spend too much on collector’s plates with the cast of Jack and Jill painted on them. Happy hunting.
