A while ago I wrote about the kind of jobs PR people do in and for the movie industry. As I already stressed, in my opinion the most common and popular job for a PR practitioner is becoming a publicist.
In the previous post, I described the job profile, pro's and con's and everything that goes with being a publicist, but for the people who want to now specifics, I suggest you to watch the film ''How to loose friends & alienate people'' (2008); I don't want to tell you what's the film about as I strongly think you should see it for yourself, but one of the main characters in the movie is actually a publicist, played by Gillian Anderson, and the role matches perfectly everything that a publicist should be and should do for a client, so if you're interested in knowing more about it, just check out if the film is still played in your nearest cinema or displayed on the shelves of your local DVD rental store.
* Another main character is British actor Simon Pegg, the one starring in the hit film ''Shaun of the dead'', so that should be a guarantee that you're going to be cracking up during the whole movie as I did.
Here I am posting about funny movie cliche's again. If anyone is interested in where I found info about movie cliche's you can click here.
Today I'm giving you a few cliche's concerning TAXI'S; did you ever notice how film characters never really pay the taxi drivers, or if they do, they miraculously always have the exact change, and movie people always get the cab right away, unless they are in danger and that's when suddenly no free cab can be found and the characters either die or steal somebody's car and run away.
Some of my previous posts where mostly on marketing techniques to create brand awareness, film awareness and what kind of PR stunts were and are successful; when writing about the latter, I started thinking about what is to be considered a PR stunt exactly and that's how a name dawned on me: the controversial documentary director Michael Moore. Some people consider him the master of revealing the truth behind modern social controversies while others despise him for his ''straight in the face'' ways and attempts of establishing his point of views as objectified facts; I consider him the modern master of successful PR.
For all the people who are not too familiar with Moore's work, i will summarize for you why exactly the man got to be world-wide famous. Moore is a film maker and author, who explored, mainly by shooting documentaries, the social issues of globalisation, corporations, Iraqi war, gun ownership, George W. Bush, and the American health care system; Time magazine included him in the 2005 100 most influential people in the world, and in the same year he even started his own film festival, the Traverse city film festival in Michigan. Since then, he's been living and working in Traverse city on his new projects.
Michael Moore's most famous documentaries are ''Bowling fr Columbine'', ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', and ''Sicko''. I'm not going to waste any time buy describing you what the documentaries about as you can read about it just clicking on the names of the documentaries above, but what I want to focus on is the way Moore made these documentaries world-wide known, as whether you hate it or loved it, almost every person who has heard of Moore and his work either love him or hate him, and isn't that the goal of any successful PR: making the public know what you're doing in order to get them to come and see your work. As ''Bowling for Columbine'' won an Oscar for Documentary Feature in 2002, and became the highest-grossing mainstream-released documentary, a record later held by ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', we can say that Moore was more than just successful in getting the audiences to see his work as all his documentaries enjoyed and enjoy both commercial and critical success.
Starting with ''Bowling for Columbine'', I will just give you a few examples of how Moore cleverly used some elements in his documentary in order to create controversy, which attracted media attention, which attracted public attention. In this documentary, Moore explores the subject of gun ownership among American citizens; also, he related the issue with the Columbine high school tragedy, as the 2 teenage murderers in Columbine owned guns easily purchased, and bullets they came across in a K-Mart store; apart from making the whole documentary sort of a PR stunt as he interviews Marilyn Manson, a controversial singer linked to the massacre by the media when it came out that the 2 killers were big fans of this guy's music, and it is well-known that the appearance of Marilyn Manson anywhere raises many issues in itself, he then went on to meet up and and attack Charlton Heston, the notorious actor, as back at the time he was the president of the American National Rifle Association. But what really got Moore plenty of publicity, was taking 2 teenage survivors from Columbine, and getting them to K-Mart to return the bullets they were wounded with, a very clever move which certainly wasn't meant to help psychologically the 2 kids, but it ended up being very useful in getting plenty of media coverage as the event drew the attention of virtually everyone. Here you have 2 short videos which aren't meant to refer to the Columbine massacre or the issue of guns, but just to give you an insight of Moore's style and the way he used these 2 celebs in his documentary.
So here we got a delicate subject as gun ownership and the Columbine high school massacre, an interview with one of the most controversial celebrities of our time, Marilyn Manson, Charlton Heston in the role of the bad guy of the documentary, and a PR stunt involving 2 real victims of a terrible tragedy; all elements very useful in creating big buzz.
Passing on to ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', which explores the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and heavily criticizes the American president Bush by linking his family to some prominent Saudis, and already we have a good element to provoke plenty of controversy and attention; this 2005 documentary was put in the centre of attention even before being released. Disney, the owner of Miramax pictures which is the company that produced the documentary, was accused by Michael Moore to have blocked the release of his film 1 day ahead of it's official release date. A long dispute, through the media, took place between Moore and Disney, just until it was proved that Disney warned Moore a whole year ahead of the time that Moore even started shooting Fahrenheit 9/11, that they wouldn't distribute the documentary as they didn't want to get into political controversies.
Here's a video where Moore gets the People's choice best movie awards for ''Fahrenheit 9/11'', and I'm asking you, is it really people's choice best movie awards of 2005, or is it just the film that got the most attention movie awards of 2005?
Sicko, on the other side, which was released in 2007, takes Mr. More to a whole new level as not only he stages a perfect PR stunt, but as he already did in ''Bowling for Columbine'', he uses very smartly real tragedy victims in promoting his views about the American health care system.
This time Moore makes real propaganda against American pharmaceutical giants and health care insurance company and he does it by taking a few Ground Zero survivors to Cuba for medical treatment; smart move but what for? To prove that Cuba has an excellent health care system? Does it? Or to help people in need of assistance like the Ground Zero survivors? Or to prove how the U.S. health care system is broken by taking a tragedy victims to an American antagonist country like Cuba to get proper health care? Or is it just that Michael Moore knows publicity, PR stunts and how to get his projects on cover pages of newspapers and in the evening news by shaking up things just a tiny little bit?
I do admit leaving out a few more controversies and PR stunts concerning Moore and his documentaries but there's just not enough space for it, so I want to leave you with a final thought; as I already stated, Michael Moore is a persona you either love or despise and that might depend on someone's personal sensibility, political views, social role and status, religion, nationality and plenty other factors that influences us in forming opinions, but what I really want to say is that in the end of the day, almost all of us know who Michael Moore is and almost all of us have an opinion on the man's work. Is it just good PR? I leave the answer to you. Here's a Michael Moore appearance on CNN regarding his troubled relations with the media.
Ok, by now you should've got the idea of what PR stunts are and how they're done to promote movies and films as part of marketing and publicity campaigns.
Certainly the good side of putting up PR stunts is creating, in an easy and quick way, media frenzy and buzz around the project the stunt is based on. As I posted previously, the film history is full of examples of successful publicity stunts which resulted in immediate press coverage and eventually in public attention and box-office earnings.
But what if a PR stunt doesn't really turn the way it was supposed to? Is bad publicity always to be considered just more publicity or can it really turn in real bad publicity and poor results?
Thinking about it I did some research looking for cases where a PR stunt didn't really work out as it was suppose to; on January 29, 2007, what was to be a buzz-building PR campaign for the Cartoon Network's movie ''Aqua teen hunger force colon movie film for theatres'' , turned out into a city lock-down under terrorist attack threat. The campaign involved small circuit boxes with images of a Mooninite (an alien from the show's cast) placed for 3 weeks in major U.S. cities, and the Mooninite was depicted giving the middle finger to drivers.
A few Boston citizens reported the boxes to the police which resulted in calling out bomb squads, closing down 2 bridges and roadways for hours, as well as alerting the Pentagon and the U.S. Northern Command.
This is what Dave Morgan, a marketing expert, had to say on the stunt:
''If the objective of the campaign was to get the attention of the citizens of Boston -- and the entire country -- mission accomplished! If part of the objective was to enhance a client's brand -- massive failure! A great family-oriented brand has been damaged in an incalculable way, and significant monetary damage could follow via compensatory damages, fines and legal fees." (www.imediaconnection.com)
Hopefully a good lesson is to be drown from this event; bad publicity isn't always just another way to gain attention and as good as good publicity, as sometimes, if PR stunts and marketing/PR strategies aren't carefully planned a disaster and complete failure can come out of it. So be aware.
The video above is meant to be a little teaser to get your attention on the book I'd like to introduce to you and possibly make you read, and if I did get your attention by now this is what I want to ask you: ever wanted to achieve fame? ever wondered how fame, once achieved, is kept at it's highest peak? why are we so attracted to famous people? or to fame just for the sake of it?
Mark Borkowski, a British publicist, delivers us a book on the fame industry, through the silent movies of the 20's to the internet era and the instant news ways of today; the book offers an insight on the world of fame, exploring and putting the highlight on the most creative stunts and practices that publicists used to promote people, movies and products throughout history.
We're talking about the genius professionals who came up with the idea of insuring Betty Grable's legs for $ 1 million, which obviously created a real media frenzy around the movie she was in at the time, the people who restrained Tom Cruise from his love of bouncing on sofa's on TV, the people who dressed Marilyn Monroe in a potato sack for a photo shoot and you have a picture of it right here:
Mark Borkowski also came up with a fame formula which apparently guarantees anyone to reach true fame and make their name noticed in the media, but I'm not going to give you the formula even though I know you're dying to know it, for that you will have to run to the store and grab the book, and for those who are not that excited about the book, just scroll down and play the video I uploaded of Mark talking about his controversial book and explaining the formula on Channel 4 News.
Posting previously about marketing which is strictly related to PR, as in my opinion there is no marketing strategy that works without including some PR techniques in it and there is no effective PR if it isn't based on some basic marketing tactics, the way it is more and more applied to the movie industry takes me towards exploring how PR is related to this industry by taking a look at the biggest PR stunts done in the history of Hollywood, as I think giving practical examples of how things were, are and are about to be done, is more useful in the process of understanding PR practice in the film world rather then just theorizing on what exactly a PR practitioner or publicist role is in this entertainment sector.
The fact is that the movie industry has never been shy about self-promotion; if we think about something as prominent as the Oscar ceremony, it is an awards which was established in order to get press coverage for the diva's, stars and film screen charmers of the day.
Cleverly-orchestrated PR campaigns have had a crucial role in promoting movies which eventually resulted in films' box-office success as the media coverage that the PR stunts would get, had the main goal of attracting the audiences attention and getting them in the theatres to see the movie which the campaign would revolve around, no matter whether the film was actually of good quality, interesting or appealing to the masses in the first place.
Here is a short list of the PR stunts in the history of Hollywood and the film industry in general up to this day.
Legendary publicist Russell Birdwell generated a buzz around this motion picture by arranging for a dozen of Zenda (Ontario) citizens to attend the world premiere of the film in New York City. If we take in consideration that the film eventually went on winning 2 Oscars we can say that the publicity stunt certainly helped into getting the movie massive media coverage.
Even in this film Birdwell had it's geniality involved as both the director and him created huge media buzz at the time, when announcing they were going to hold open auditions around the U.S. to search for a perfect Scarlett, the main character in the Margaret Mitchell's novel ''Gone with the wind'' and soon to be a movie. Eminent stars like Lana Turner and Katherine Hepburn attended the audition with no success, as the role was swept away by at that time little known Vivien Leigh, an actress that managed to make history by playing the role of Scarlett O'Hara.
The movie was actually a musical, talking about an agriculture professor securing a movie role for his trained mule called Shirley. To promote the movie, the film publicist led Shirley, with an ad for the movie on her back, to walk down Fifth Avenue and enter the restaurant overlooking Rockefeller Plaza's ice rink, a stunt which secured plenty of column inches in the papers the next day.
This comedy was about a newspaper editor, starring Clark Gable and Doris Day. To promote the movie, Paramount Pictures filmed 50 newsmen sitting at a desk, and gave a few of them lines in the film. The sole purpose of getting in the movie Hollywood reporters was to make them focus and write about the movie, which resulted in pure success as the movie received 2 Oscars that year and was placed on the New York Times 10 best movies list of 1958.
Columbia Pictures told the director of this movie to film an alternate, happy ending as the original one was rather dark; later on this was turned into a publicity opportunity by bringing in an audience and giving them cards with thumbs up and thumbs down to vote for the ending they prefer, and the whole thing did get on the mouths of a lot of people as it never happened before that the audience got to chose the ending of a movie.
The producers of the movie thought of a unique way of getting a buzz in the media; before the movie was released, they spread the word that the footage of the documentary-style movie was actually real and discovered after 3 film students, searching for the so-called Blair Witch, disappeared in the woods of Maryland.
The stunt worked as the film made it to the Guinness Book of World Records for the highest earnings in relation to the movie budget as the movie cost only around $ 35,000 and it earned about $ 140 million at the box office, only in the U.S. I'm posting for you both the kind of footage that was spread through internet and made believe to be real by the producers of the movie as well as the official trailer which obviously came out once it was known that the whole documentary was actually a movie.
Even though using a world-wide known celebrity to draw attention on a movie isn't really anything we already didn't heard of, in this case the originality of the idea that the producers of the movie had was in using Paris Hilton, who starred in this horror, in an original way: they printed and put on sale t-shirts advertising the death of Paris the 6th of May, which was the date of the official release of the film. Even though the film didn't earn much at U.S. box office, it did have success over seas.
British actor Sacha Baron Cohen played a Kazakh journalist in this comedy and what he did to raise attention was trying to enter the White House, dressed as Borat, the Kazakh weird journalist, and invite American president George W. Bush to the screening of the film. Even the Kazakh government reacted to the numerous publicity stunts that Cohen performed to publicise the movie release and warned that the horrible character played by Cohen didn't represent properly the values and ways of the Kazakh people. No need to say that the implication of the Kazakh Government resulted in gaining even more press coverage and eventually the movie was a huge success throughout the globe.
Here's a video showing you exactly what happened when Borat went campaigning to promote the movie.(I do apologize for the subtitles)
I graduated PR, media, publicity in Italy just to move to England and join a MA in PR. Hopefully by the end of the course I will have the right skills to enter the world of PR through the main door.
A while ago I wrote about the kind of jobs PR people do in and for the movie industry. As I already stressed, in my opinion the most common and popular job for a PR practitioner is becoming a publicist.
