Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA!-Ron Burgundy, Anchorman
Who the hell is Ron Burgundy? You know I don’t follow the NFL!- Diana Brillhart, My Whole Life
For some reason over the course of the past ten years I have skidded though life without ever seeing Anchorman. I am not joking you, jaws drop and people give me the side eye when I assure them I have never seen it. I couldn't tell you a single line, joke or name from the first movie so when I got a text during winter break about seeing Anchorman 2, I was like sure, why not give it a try. I quickly did some research on the first movie and then realized I was pretty informed about the movie, not by Google but by social media.
The power of social media is undeniable. There are two extremes that are causing reinvention in the social media realm. The first is the power of sharing, and the other is the power of connecting. Both of these can create spectacular marketing strategies that can cause havoc on industries. The power of sharing is easily seen with the new release of Beyonce’s new album self titled, Beyoncé. With no marketing done prior to the album, and just a simple banner on iTunes the album exploded and sold 80,000 copies in three hours. The word of the visual album became the hottest topic on every social media site around the world. With no money spent on marketing, it’s amazing to see the impact social media had on the album.
The Anchorman 2 homepage
is an interactive website that allows fans to watch videos, learn about the
cast, play games and more all with the same theme of the movie. I would say
that the website is perfection.
The next thing the Anchorman 2 team did was attack social
media. AdWeek’s article blatantly says it how it is, Will Ferrell’s Anchorman 2is Changing The Way Movies Are Marketed. There is really no other way to put it, they changed the way and connected
with their fans like never before. With “custom- made social content” and user-generated content, the team
made sure that everyone knew Anchorman was back and better than ever. Facebook,
Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, YouTube, Pinterest, were
covered in old and new Ron Burgundy pictures, gifs, memes, sayings and more. You had to be living under a rock
(like how I was for the past ten years) to not know that the movie was coming
out in December.
But for some, was it too much?
Dan Lyons questions if Anchorman 2 was a Media Blitz Flop?
And I had to wonder, could it have been? Along with
user-generated content about the movie, Lyons lists the tip of the iceberg of the
marketing campaign entailed
How big was the campaign?
There were the Dodge Durango commercials, which were not just funny but also incredibly effective. There was Ferrell's appearance as an actual newscaster on a North Dakota TV station, and an arrival in Winnipeg to announce a curling tournament, and an appearance on ESPN interviewing Peyton Manning. There was an event at Emerson College in Boston, which named its School of Communications after Ron Burgundy, for one day.
There were videos on Funny or Die, the site Ferrell founded with his writing partner Adam McKay. There were underwear ads for Jockey. There was a mobile app, and a Ron Burgundy autobiography. There was an Anchorman exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, D.C. There was an appearance on the cover of Dog Fancy magazine. There's a Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor called "Scotchy Scotch Scotch." Ron Burgundy appeared on Letterman, Conan and Kimmel.
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| Ben and Jerry's Instagram |
Anchorman was everywhere. But the strangest thing was that
the opening weekend for the movie earned $26.8 million, while the original
Anchormen earned $28 million. What
caused this? Could it have been external factors of the terrible weather across the US and people
not being able to get to the theater, or was it that people had seen so much of
Ron and the others that they didn't feel the need to see the movie? If I were
the marketing team for Anchorman 2, I would be trying to find these answers so when my boss came to me and asked "what happened" I would have a solid answer. The marketing team pulled off the marketing campaign of the century
but the results didn't show.
I think to myself, what would I have done differently? I
honestly don’t know. The marketing was revolutionary; I have never seen
anything like it. It fit the theme of the movie and targeted their market. If
they were to have done less, it would have been disappointing, if they had done
more maybe more fans would have pulled away, so what could have gone
differently. I have thought long and hard and I have come to the conclusion
that it was a fluke, and that the marketing was flawless.
Lyons came up with his own conclusion:
Marketers can extract two lessons:
Don't wear out your audience. The marketing campaign for the Anchorman movie ended up competing with the movie itself.
Product, product, product. All the marketing in the world can't save or sell a bad product. But in this case the movie itself was good enough that people started telling friends about it, and so it built up over time.
People have said that if you don’t finish first, you’re
last. Well in the case of Anchorman the results don’t matter. I think that is
was the most anticipated, talked about movie and has changed the ways
marketing’s teams will market movies. After further examination of Anchorman
and their social media campaign, I can see that they used both the power of
connecting and sharing. By deeply engaging with their audience through multiple
platforms, and having a strong brand presence which created user generated
content though sharing, the campaign was revolutionary.
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