Yesterday the second Star Wars Force Awakens trailer was released, and the internet again went into collective convulsions (We did too… in the agency…) The online pre-sales of tickets has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, massive: though whether it’s all part of Disney’s considered marketing strategy or just the massive appeal of the Star Wars franchise itself, who knows.
Disney is the master of promotion, marketing, storytelling—and this is its moment. Nothing is left up to chance. “Everything that we have done to date has been extremely deliberate,” Iger said. “And we have an extremely carefully constructed and deliberate plan going forward.”
“All they do is release a poster and the Internet goes nuts,” Phil Contrino, vice president and chief analyst at BoxOffice.com says. “When they put out a trailer, its pandemonium. They’re releasing toys from a movie no one’s even seen yet.”
Other brands have tapped in, from Target’s Share the Force to Walmart. Recently, Campbell Soup created a minor online controversy for its use of a family with two fathers (Why is this still controversial in 2015?):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rZOMY2sOnE
and Kraft has tapped in too, with two similar ads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7roF7YNzAgs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ov6-F92TQug
and the Star Wars Battlefront game has also upped the ante:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mByznNYCWTY
No doubt we’ll hit peak saturation around November. But we’re still prebooking our tickets.