Columbia Pictures probably thought they were just phoning it in when they released a teaser poster for its upcoming spy thriller Salt which contained nothing other than Angelina Jolie's face and the tagline "Who is Salt?" But there's times when you don't need to be all that inventive to light up the internet like a Christmas tree with buzz about your film.

Across the web, film sites are responding to the news that the new Angelina Jolie film will feature Angelina Jolie's face and puzzling what that says about the film, the campaign behind it, the chances of passing meaningful health care reform under this Congress and the state of civilization at large.

Fanboy central joblo.com which was given the exclusive first right to bring this poster to the world, points to the main issues raised by the image, explaining that the poster, "bravely puts Jolie front and center with little explanation about the film itself. What it does though is tease you a little bit with this striking pose (as a teaser poster should do) and then direct you to WhoisSalt.com where people will no doubt be headed. It should be noted that while this version of the poster is static, there is another version you'll see in theater lobbies that will have Jolie in motion. "

Jeffery Wells at Hollywood Elsewhere labels the poster, "a disappointment," noting that it fails to build on the previously established fact that, yes, it is Angelina Jolie. But on the other hand, he goes on, it's not Angelina Jolie enough. "The other problem is that the face could almost belong to someone else. Is it Angie or a cyborg or Megan Fox's malevolent sister?"

At Collider, while heralding the majesty of the face, blogger Matthew Goldberg astutely identifies the thinness of any inquiries that might be sparked by the tagline. "That question sounds like one a person with a learning disability would ask. I would think that the leap to get people to accept the title Salt would be tough enough but phrasing it in the context of a question does the movie no favors. Who is Salt? I don't know. Who is Pepper? Who is Cinnamon? Maybe it's just the worst stripper name of all-time. I don't know and I think they should just use my tagline, "Angelina Jolie Looks Hot and Beats People Up."

At firstshowing.net however, Alex Billington stands by the tag, saying "I like that they're trying to build up as much mystery and intrigue as possible." He goes on however, to point his finger at the elephant smack dab in the middle of this whole campaign; the fatal flaw right at the dead center of the empire that might just bring the whole darn colonial edifice crashing down. He demands, "The face on this also seems off-center and I'm not sure if that's part of the design or what?"

Or what indeed!

[Tells some story of this girl in a bar who totally loves him, like, so much, but doesn't know about the movie]. I mean, when someone who identifies themselves as a huge fan, who has read the book and passed it to their friends and self-identifies as this type of person, when the movie is IN THEATERS and they don't even know there is a movie at all…that is a complete failure in the publicity and marketing of the movie...
I don't want to go through it, because it'll just be depressing, but the failures in marketing were just…big. Unrecoverable.

I would have guessed "Because it was awful." But I'm no Tucker Max.
[Pic: Flickr]

Microblogging might seem straightforward enough to your typical Silicon Valley office drone. But Hollywood superstars are used to things coming a bit easier in life. And PR firms like Santa Monica-based Id are ready to hold their hands on Twitter, Nicole LaPorte (disclaimer: the long-suffering wife of Gawker's Richard Rushfield) writes at the Daily Beast, and help bolster their image, or at least not wreck it.

What does Id teach? Well, only clients like Herman, Ben Stiller, and Natalie Portman know for sure, but it's possible to distill a few likely lessons from LaPorte's story:

• Make a friend at Twitter Inc. Everyone who's anyone has one. They're great for when hackers and impostors come around — or for when your problem is more old school. LaPorte: "Virtually every publicist in Hollywood has a go-to person at Twitter-the equivalent these days of having an "in" with famed MGM publicity chiefs-cum-fixers... during Hollywood's Golden Age."
  
• Latch on to current events. Just because you're a celebrity and no one really cares what you think about important issues doesn't mean you can't offer commentary. Everyone loves a clown: "The day that President Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Ben Stiller tweeted: 'Was awoken this morning to my daughter telling me that I had no shot at ever winning the Nobel Peace Prize.'"
  
• Launch with a crowd. A real one. Herman issued his first tweet at the 140tc Twitter Conference (see video above), thus helping ensure a bunch of re-tweets from the Twitter junkies and bigwigs in the audience and thus accelerating his microblogging popularity.

Thank goodness for flacks. Without them, celebrities would have to earn Twitter attention all on their own, with only their wildly inflated global popularity to hep them.

Sure, Twitter will end the year with around 12 million users, or roughly 7 percent of total people on the internet, many of them barely touching the service, according to an analysis by eMarketer. But Twitter is buzzy and trendy, lending it a certain authority when placed at the focal point of a spin campaign. "Twitter can't be stopped," a Weinstein marketer tells the Washington Post. "People will be Twittering during the opening credits," adds the president of Magnolia Pictures. "It's never been this easy to be this influential," says a guy who helped promote a Disney movie.

OK; how has Twitter-crit transformed the movie business in this, the online service's big year? Let's ask IMDB:

Clearly, crap movies don't stand a chance any more. Thank you, Twitter.

(Top pic: Meta.Live.Nu)

According to Guest of a Guest, Weinstein is leveraging the substantial marketing might of A Small World, the exclusive "Facebook for millionaires" that the Weinstein Co. stupidly invested in three years ago, on behalf of Basterds.

All 400,000 of them! And A Small World's self-satisfied, plugged in, wealthy membership are just the kind of people to go wild over a chance to win some signed movie crap.

As the Weinstein empire downsizes, Harvey is not too far from a joke Bruce Feirstein made in the New York Observer a few years back about his no-stone-unturned approach to awards campaigns:

I keep having this vision that I'm going to open the front door and find ... Harvey Weinstein himself, doing some door-to-door lobbying: "I've got Anthony Minghella out in the car. Want to meet him?"

Weinstein is reportedly trying to unload his stake in the site, which recently announced that it "plans" to be profitable by the end of the year. Smart move!

They paid Kenya Mejia $1,800 to say "I love you, Jake Minor!" in her actual graduation speech, the idea being that she would say she was inspired to call out her crush by seeing the same thing done in this movie, I Love You, Beth Cooper. Then the video of this would "go viral," supposedly. Let us count the ways in which this plan failed.

1. The movie bombed. "Even Ms. Mejia hasn't seen it." Return-on-investment fail.

2. The Fox-produced-but-supposedly-just-amateur YouTube video the company posted of the stunt barely has over 2,000 hits. Why would anyone care? They would not. Viral fail.

3. The school district is pissed. Education fail

4. This "Jake Minor" character that Kenya called out as her crush is not even her boyfriend. Although her boyfriend supposedly "endorsed it," hopefully for a hefty cut of the check. Furthermore, Jake Minor has a girlfriend of his own. His assessment of Kenya: "She's pretty quiet." Love connection fail.

Let us never try this again.

[WSJ]

Like the Kodak pitch didn't you come away from that thinking, "I need this Kodak film carousel to display pictures of my pristine family or else I'm denying them my affection." All of the fictional (and sometimes real) products that made their way into Don's pitch room have been marketed as though they extensions of one's personality. Be it a can of shaving cream or a cup of coffee, each product says something about you that you want people to know.

That's why reading this piece in the New Yorker about a Mad Men ad meeting is cringe-inducing.

Alison Hoffman, the marketing director, described a Web-site promotion that will allow users to create their own "Mad Men" avatars, choosing among different ties, pipes, crinolines, and pearls.

"We're still adding accessories," she said.

"We need more purses!" someone suggested.

Next, Theresa Beyer, the vice-president of activation (another thing that didn't exist in the sixties), outlined a tie-in with Banana Republic, including a contest for a walk-on role. "Banana Republic has really taken this promotion to the nth degree," she said. Then she announced an activation coup: the Mets had just agreed to designate a "Mad Men" seating section at one of their games.

"Get out of here!" Theano Apostolou, the head of publicity, said.

"The exciting thing is everyone in our section is going to have a fedora," Beyer went on. "Of course, the band around it will have to be Mets colors." The marketers cooed: happiness.

Unhappiness! Mets seats? Ugh! Are we also to expect another long caravan of subways shrink-wrapped in an eye-assaulting Sterling Cooper theme? It's embarrassing to step into a train car that's been hijacked by advertisers. Train passengers will keep their eyes on their shoes generally, unless they be thought of as saps. So how well will sitting in a cramped plastic chair with a giant Don Draper silhouette at the Mets game evoke the themes of necessity, luxury, or personality? You can't just slap a logo on something and call it a "branding exercise ."

Thankfully though, the ladies are onto something with the clothes and the avatars. Those are direct extensions of our personalities. Things we want but are convinced we need and Mad Men can give them to us. Indeed, if there's activity that takes more time than putting an outfit together it's the agonizing amount of time I spend looking for the right avatar. Recently, I settled for nice cropped picture of a fictional red head named Joan Holloway.

The Wall Street Journal does a little comparative study of the two franchises' marketing strategies, focusing mainly on the about-to-drop (squee!) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. See, there's a little romance in that book, and Twilight is all about romance, so is that vampire story's mega success responsible for the HP posters that front-and-center tout hot, hot teen wizard love? The producers say no!

"With all due respect to "Twilight," the longevity and world-wide success of the Harry Potter franchise speaks for itself," a studio representative said.

Ha. As it should be. Twilight is a blip on the cultural radar compared to the Harry Potter phenomenon—the provenance of chastely horny teenage girls and lonely, approaching middle age hobby LARPers, whereas Harry and Co. have the mass and broad appeal of a Da Vinci Code (only they're much, much better.) Though, if we're honest with our Potter-obsessed selves, it's hard to believe that the smoldering and yearning of Twilight—such catnip!—had nothing to do with the smoldering and yearning poster shown here.

The Twilight producers, for their part, are respectably cognizant of their big brother's long shadow:

"It's the only franchise that we ever pay attention to," says Rob Friedman, chief executive and co-chairman of Summit Entertainment. "We are very cognizant of where they are, and we've always been wary of being in too close proximity to ‘Harry Potter' because we know our fans cross over so much, and we definitely don't want to compete with ‘Harry' for attention."

Damn right. Wizard beats vampire, every time.

We got leaked this parody video starring the network's marketing heads Mike Benson and Marla Provencio in which they "pimp" a made-up show called The Smoking Clown. Supposedly it was made a while back for an internal meet-and-greet within the network in which each department tells the others what it is that they do. It's not clear if this was ever shown or if the idea of video showing a bunch of television executives smoking and drinking in the office was squashed before the meeting.

For fourteen profanity-laden minutes, the crack team guides us through the soulless business of commodifying and selling something you absolutely hate. Everything is covered smarmily—from bitchy contract-waving actors, to competition with other networks, to strategies for ensnaring lucrative and elusive kids' eyeballs.

And while it's all pretty ha ha, sure, it's also pretty insidious. In that, while The Smoking Clown doesn't exist, utter ABC dreck like Private Practice does. And, through all of the nefarious means depicted here, the show is fed to and lapped up by brain-addled regular Americans just like you and me. We're being manipulated, people! And they're just sitting back and laughing at us.

Keep an eye out for Lost co-creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse playing themselves. Network cross-promotion!

The special sponsorship with Subway is enabling NBC to bring back the series, executives said, in a deal they described as made possible by a decision to go to advertisers earlier than usual in what NBC called the "infront," to ask for ideas about interweaving brands into shows.

You read that correctly: the fucking Subway product placement is enabling this show to be on TV, period. All the other stuff in there is just extra low fat mayo. How hardcore is NBC willing to get here? Hardcore to the bone:

"Chuck" appealed to Subway for reasons that included its audience, which is mostly the type of younger consumer that buys a lot of subs at malls. The show takes place in a mall, and Chuck's girlfriend, Sarah, is a C.I.A. agent who works under cover at various stands in the food court.

It is no great leap to believe she could be selling Subway sandwiches next season. An NBC executive said discussions have been under way about the specifics of the tie-in.

We hope you're very happy about the success of your "Buy a Subway Sandwich to Save NBC's 'Chuck!'" campaign now. Sandwich whores.
[NYT]

Like you, Wendy Farrington is a big fan of Chuck and sorry that it's probably getting canceled, so she's taken to the internet with a grassroots campaign to save the show—by eating Subway sandwiches!

"As a non-Nielsen viewer, I feel the most effective means of making an impact is to wield my consumer power in a way that NBC and their sponsors will be able to measure," Ms. Farrington wrote, noting Subway's support of "Chuck." "To demonstrate my gratitude to that franchise for their support of Chuck, I'm pitching a 'Finale & FOOTLONG' campaign to all the Chuck forums and boards."

Ms. Farrington also announced she was pitching "key TV critics who've been supportive of Chuck."

And Subway of course is all like "HEH, yes, buy our sandwiches, it'll be good for your show, or whatever, sure, just buy those sandwiches. We love that show, Charles, or whatever." And then this secret info leaked out, which is disturbing:

Subway has "a few folks we work with in Hollywood who we consider our secret weapons." He declined to name them, "because we prefer that they remain secret."

I'm guessing that one of them is the guy from Chuck.
[Ad Age, Previously]

If Chuck had better writers they may have been able to craft this one into something that was self-referential and funny, but as it is it's just crazy awkward. Ben Silverman's product-placing path to economic success continues!

Subway's "Chuck" appearance goes beyond the usual trappings of product placement, in which an on-air appearance or even a reference from a character is considered a boffo execution. Getting a character to repeat the company's ad slogan is tantamount to turning "Chuck" for even the briefest of moments into a bona fide Subway commercial.

[Ad Age]

His flacks are offering sponsorship of the party's VIP room—including naming rights!—for a mere $25,000. Let's hope Ex-Lax goes for that buy. They're also selling naming rights to the whole party for an undisclosed sum. It's a bargain at any price! The pitch claims that a single mention on Perez's site reaches more than 300 million people—more than the entire population of the US, in other words.

Yea.

Below is the entire "deck" they're sending around trying to sell this year's Perez party—last year's event was so star-studded, how could you resist? Half a billion "media impressions!" You'd be crazy not to pay to associate your brand, in the midst of a recession, with this...stuff:

ABC is leading the way with two new pilots for the upcoming post-boom season:

One is an untitled project starring Kelsey Grammer, who plays a Wall Street millionaire unhorsed by the collapsing economy and forced into a "Mr. Mom"-like role at home with the family he hardly ever saw. The other is "Canned," a pilot about several younger Gen X friends fired from their lofty perch at an investment bank.

They certainly project a certain sheen of realism, no? And since product placement is increasingly non-negotiable for TV shows in these twilight years of the Pepsi Generation, ABC has hit upon an ingenious solution: Product placement of cheap shit. They're actually mocking Starbucks in the first episode, thereby ensuring a future episode revolving around characters visiting Wal-Mart to purchase Folgers and try on Hanes brand underwear. Hanes: comfort and durability for your poor balls.

Television is finally for the people, again.

[Ad Age; Pic via. "Sitcommunism" tag stolen from commenter Uncle_Billy_Slumming]

Last week Tina Fey herself said that there was no product placement deal involved in this. And today, Ad Age did some "reporting" and, according to both McDonald's and NBC, that's right, this was no paid product placement deal; 30 Rock writers just love the McFlurry that much:

As it turns out, the McDonald's inclusion was really part of the script; McDonald's didn't pay for it, said Jennifer Lane Landolt, director-entertainment alliances for McDonald's. NBC's ad-sales department was also made aware of the inclusion, according to an NBC spokeswoman.

"30 Rock" approached executives from the restaurant chain in advance, asking if they could make use of a McDonald's restaurant for filming purposes, she said. McDonald's executives examined the script and found nothing in it that portrayed the company and its restaurants in a bad light, Ms. Lane Landolt said. "If we felt that something disparaged the brand, we would have pushed back on what they did, but no, we didn't make any changes," she said. The episode was shot in a restaurant operated by an independent New York City franchisee, who was paid for the time his store was closed. The McDonald's ad that ran during the show was "part of our traditional media buy," said Ms. Lane Landolt; no advertising was moved around specifically to be near the "30 Rock" episode.

There you have it: this was a totally organic thing. I have no factual basis whatsoever to say, "Bullshit, they're obviously cuddling up to advertisers during a recession, this is all semantics, they'll get their money on the back end." [Ad Age]

As you see, it's eggs. With Disney characters stamped on the shells. Possibly selling at a markup. Is this some kind of tie-in to a movie, or further proof of the evils of agribusiness and the coming apocalypse? And while marketers obviously want to trick kids into believing that the plain old eggs are going to come out magically Mickey-shaped, we want to know: 1. Do the eggs come with the mold? 2. How much does said mold cost? 3. Does egg actually seep out from under edges of said mold, rendering shape unrecognizable, as has been the case in all our experiments with whimsical egg-shapery? The only way I can see this strangely low-fi "new product" swaying any egg-hater is if you give them something shell-on, ie hard-boiled or soft-cooked. Even then, any kid is quickly going to get wise to the fact that it's just a plain old egg, but a prancing Donald Duck might buy you a reluctant bite or two.

Last month the MPAA banned the movie's poster for being too raunchy. That was a huge red flag. The company responded by thumbing its nose with a cute little riff on the controversy, and continued on its merry way, marketing-wise.

But ads for the film were still getting banned across the country. Now it seems to be sinking in that the very title of the movie could prevent it from being properly marketed and advertised, dooming it to box office failure:

The public outcry has left the film's director and distributor flabbergasted. "I can't believe this is happening in the 21st century," says Mr. Smith. "When was the last time you saw a porno with the word porno in the title?"

"Anyone who takes the title seriously is missing the comedic aspect of the movie," says Harvey Weinstein, co-chairman of Weinstein Co.

"This is the one time I don't want controversy. This is a big, broad, fun Seth Rogen comedy," he says. "Hopefully people will see the movie for what it really is."

Do we detect a touch of nervousness in Harvey's quotes? As dumb as American puritanism is, you'd think that a company in Weinstein Co.'s position would go out of its way to make sure that a promising film actually succeeds financially. If Zack And Miri tanks because of a careless title... well, let's just hope it doesn't. For Harvey's sake!

“After waiting in an area with an open bar and a DJ, we walked up a driveway illuminated by fluorescent lights to a darkened room where we saw 40 nude women. Most of them were wearing strange masks made of wool. “The models stood in the middle of the room - black girls at the front and white girls at the back. Then the entire album played without any introduction or explanation.”

This is the new standard for everything. Maybe not so fun for the ladies, though.

[via LA Rag Mag. Further...art shots at Kanye's blog]