Wacky, Sass-Talking Animals, the latest computer-animated children’s film about wacky, sass-talking animals, was a big disappointment at the box office, and the studio knows exactly what went wrong: a lack of advertisements on cereal boxes.
“It was such a fundamental mistake,” says VP of Marketing Eric Larenger. “We thought we had made a movie good enough and appealing enough to attract an audience without cereal ads, or as we call it in the biz, ‘breakfast messaging.’ Boy, were we wrong.”
In fact, recent studies have shown that ordinary people will almost never attend a new film unless they are constantly reminded of its existence. In one study done last year, 80% of people surveyed were unable to recall any knowledge of Spider-Man 3 ten minutes after seeing a trailer on television. By contrast, almost all subjects were able to demonstrate awarness of the film when in a room filled with Spider-Man 3 merchandise.
“This is really a wake-up call for the industry,” Larenger said with a sigh. “We cannot relax our vigilance even for a moment, or the audience is gone forever. We now know it simply isn’t enough to advertise on television, billboards, clothing, fast food packaging, websites, toys, completely unrelated products, and even print media. If they don’t see our logo and main character staring at them first thing in the morning, we might as well just hang it up and go home.”
