The Marketing of Coraline

Ward Jenkins | February 10th, 2009

“Reinvent the way you market a movie.” – Phil Knight, Nike Founder/Laika CEO

And with those words, the folks at Weiden + Kennedy went right to work, creating a very curious marketing campaign for Coraline, the stop-motion animated, Henry Selick-directed film produced by Laika and distributed by Focus Features. They certainly had their work cut out for them. I’m thinking that this ugly poster (along with the ABC series of one-sheets featured below it) certainly couldn’t have been anything that W+K concocted. When you compare that garish poster with the one featured above, one has to wonder what’s going on. It looks like to me that W+K took over the campaign from a clueless film promotion team at Focus and then went a more subversive route by sending ‘mystery boxes’ to various bloggers (mentioned previously):

Of course, I’m speculating here. I really don’t know what happened. All I know is that the ad campaign took a decidedly different turn once I learned of those mystery boxes. And the official movie site, too. That was done by W+K as well. Be sure to check this post out, as there’s lots of talented people who worked on the campaign. With a $16.8M (USD) take for the first weekend, I think they succeeded (it wasn’t expected to do more than $10M for a movie like it). See video clips, too.

Also on W+K Portland’s blog: Coraline Premiere. (Look for a shot of the Joe Ranft puppet that has a cameo in the beginning of the film.)

One more thing: Cartoon Brew on the Ranft Bros. in Coraline.

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  • Henry Selick is a genius. And the work W+K did was outstanding.
  • monolithcreative
    i really hate the mentality of animated hollywood films where they think they HAVE to use big name actors to do voices.

    hire voice talent to sell the reality of the characters not a face. now, unfortunately, when i see coraline i will see the actors and not the characters. and i HAAAAATE dakota fanning...effing hate her.

    why do you think futurama is so awesome? if features the voice talent of billy west. why do you think looney toons work so well? mel blanc.
  • I agree about the over usage of hollywood actors as voiceovers. But honestly, I forgot it was Dakota as the voice of Coraline while watching it. She was actually pretty decent. I would suggest seeing the film first before you go all off on it, 'monolithcreative'.

    Another thing, Futurerama is not 'awesome' just because of the voices. The writing and timing of the humor is king in my opinion.
  • SamD
    I also think that's an over-reaction. The voice acting in Coraline is very well done, and works perfectly for the film.
  • Actually, it doesn't matter who does the voices. If you watch a movie and completely forget who are the actors behind the characters, then it's fine. I think Shark Tale is the perfect example of an animation that fails terribly at doing that.
  • Wow! The old and new posters are literally night and day! W+K definitely did a great job with transforming the way this movie was marketed, and the buzz obviously paid off with a stellar box office debut.

    I loved the boxes too: http://thefutureofads.com/2009/02/09/coraline-r...

    Great stuff!
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