Paramount Pictures: Revolutionizing Horror Movie Marketing

Paramount Pictures has been one of the top leading studios in Hollywood for decades, producing incredibly successful movies that have captivated audiences worldwide. Some of their most successful movies include Top Gun: Maverick, Titanic, Interstellar, as well as the Transformers and Mission: Impossible series. Two of their more recent releases, Scream VI and Smile, were no exception to their success, however both used unorthodox marketing tactics that ultimately helped to garner national attention and generate anticipation among fans.

One of the primary marketing tactics used by Paramount Pictures to promote these movies was the usage of actors in highly publicized places. In preparation for Smile’s release, Paramount hired “smilers” to deliver their “most haunting smirk” in places where they knew the actors would be visible on public television. On the Today Show, one of these actors, wearing a fluorescent yellow shirt with the word ‘Smile’ on front, was clearly visible throughout the duration of the news segment and screenshots of the actor went viral on social media. Similarly, actors donning the same creepy smile and yellow shirt were visible behind home plate throughout the entirety of a Yankees v. Red Sox baseball game. Hoping to recreate the success seen with Smile’s marketing, Paramount decided to use a similar tactic to create buzz surrounding the newest installment of the Scream series, Scream VI.

As a result, the main antagonists of the series, Ghostface, made appearances in cameras live streaming public places, ending with an appearance in a camera feed showing the view from the top of the empire state building. Adding to the campaign, Paramount didn’t announce that the appearances would be happening, other than to give local law enforcement a heads up. As a result of the appearances, people began to call 911 because they were nervous the Ghostface character was milling around in their city. In addition to the live cameos, Paramount played a prank on fans at the Grevin museum in Paris by replacing a wax Ghostface with a real person, who jumped out at anyone who got too close.

Both of these campaigns were masterminded by Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing and distribution, Marc Weinstock. He comments on the notoriety of these two campaigns, and states “When the marketing is fun, audiences think the movie is going to be fun and they want to go on the ride with you. Traditional advertising doesn’t work by itself, You need everything. You need to be hit from all sides. For campaigns to be successful, they really have to break through culturally, and that’s what we tried to do.” However, in a growing world of fast-paced media and shrinking attention spans, it’s easy to miss the mark completely when trying something new in the world of marketing. Founder of CAA Marketing, Jae Goodman, who has worked on campaigns for brands including Netflix and Nike, said that “most advertising is completely annoying” and that “There’s all the data in the world to support that with each passing day humans have less tolerance for interruptive advertising. It is rare when a campaign breaks through.”

The latest Scream film currently has made more than $120 million at the worldwide box office to date and had the highest opening weekends of any of the films in the franchise, garnering $44.5 million. Additionally, Smile was a box office success, grossing over $217 million worldwide while having a $17 million budget. As public media has overwhelmingly credited the success of these films to their unorthodox marketing tactics, the question arises; is this the future of movie marketing?

By: Jack Tomlinson