Saw Jackass Number 2 this weekend. Liked it as much if not more than the first. Whacked stunts that are funny as hell. Others agree: $28 million in one weekend. Which got me thinking how much like a good brand movie franchises such as this are.It knows exactly what it is, who it’s audience is, how to get that message to them, and most importantly: doesn’t try to be something other than what it is.
With a name like Jackass, name says it all: guys doing insane shit. A product I can identify with. I grew up around brothers who had fights on the 4th of July with Roman candles. Restless kin who tried to see what would win: go-kart, car or wall. Watching Jackass is like one big home movie for me.
It’s not for everyone, but Jackass 2 is the only movie I’ve ever laughed out loud so much at – and cringed. Maybe it was the camaraderie felt in the audience with the other Jackass brand evangelists. The feeling that no matter where I looked, I was sure to find someone with powertools, fuses and the need to challenge gravity in their past – and present.
Keepers of the brand indeed.
A good brand dominates the competition. As for anybody who said they never had such a great time as they did at Snakes? First, I don’t believe them. Second, the opening stunt in J2 with a snake and certain body part will make you forget about any planes.
Call him head Jackass, but Knoxville concentrated on making a solid product for his audience. P.T. Barnum. Vince McMahon. Wal-Mart. Jerry Springer. Apple. They all knew what their audience wanted. And they gave it to ’em. So does Knoxville. Crazy stunts and plenty of ’em.
Didn’t cost a lot to make relative to standard Hollywood films, $11 million, and has already grossed over 2.5 times that. Is there any doubt this brand’s ‘product’ will sell and be profitable? Postive WOM and reviews will continue to help the cause.
Skits such as: Firehose Rodeo. The Toro Totter. Medicine Ball Dodgeball - in the dark. Terrorist Taxi. With titles like these, no good will follow. And J2 delivers. Each member comes on. Says what the stunt is. Then we watch as it’s executed. Like it? Hate it? It works. Doesn’t get any simpler than that for a brand.
Except making sure they can manage to stay alive for number three.
Tags: advertising, Jackass Number 2, brands, viral
9 comments:
I've written in the past that movies - not even franchises such as Jackass, but each individual movie - is and needs to be treated like a brand. That's because most movies are not part of a franchise but stand-alone offerings.
The reason I think this mindset needs to be in place when marketing a movie is that there's often no bigger umbrella to put the movies under. So the movie isn't a product being released under a larger brand tent but a brand in and of itself.
You're right in saying that the Jackass team knows how to market and deliver on the brand promise. They give the audience exactly what it expects and don't deviate from the premise. While the movie might be of questionable artistic value there's no denying the audience is set for movies like this.
I had a really, really good time at Snakes on a Plane, and a good time as well at Jackass 2... for basically the same reason - if you're going to see a movie in the theater, it should be something of a shared experience. And with both of these there was so much energy in the audience that I couldn't help but have a great time.
As for having the best time, I think the winner this year for me would have been Pirates 2, and Snakes... after that. And I'm not lying!
Jackass the brand. It just feels so wrong. In fact, attaching elevated marketing thinking to Jackass reminds me of some old Woody Allen schtick.How was the marketing of Jackass different from other films?
I thought we'd hit the limit when we branded water.
ha ha Fred, then you’re going to LOVE the Jackass 2 sno-globes for x-mas.
kate, tell me you didn't have a good time at Snkaes. Really? The opening snake bit in Jackass was WAY better than the guy with the snake in teh restroom in Snakes, you gotta admit.
But Fred, Chris makes a good point, that all movies, while possibly being classified under one genre or another, still each have their own voice and audience.
I don't know what everyone else's Snakes on a Plane experiences were like, but I went to a midnight showing on opening night with a group of friends in a sold-out theatre with LOUD FOLKS who cheered along as if we had all already seen it ten zillion times. We made jokes, we yelled at characters, we sang along to the song at the end; it was like freakin' Rocky Horror, I swear.
(You've got me on the opening snake bit in Jackass 2 though. I think I laughed harder at the note on the hotel wall though. I can't even think about that too much at work or I'll fall apart giggling in my cube.)
k - wow. It's funny because that just wasn't my experience with Snakes. And I really wanted to like it way back from when I first heard about it.
Audience I saw it with though, albeit a weekend crowd earlier on a Sat evening, didn't have that reaction. I had the reaction for Jackass you had with Snakes. Everyone was laughing.
I’ve seen every form of Alien/Blair Witch/28 Days/Anaconda/Jaws in 7D/Dawn-of-the-dead/Wolfman Meets Frankenstein/The Ring/Scary Movie/Shawn of the Dead type horror flick out there. Lot of those went over the top, but did it well. Many of the scenes in Snakes had nothing about them I liked. (Maybe seeing kids in the audience dulled it in that regard, but I don't think so. Still, no way kids should've been watching some of the stuff in that.)
This just came up way short for me because it sure felt like they were going for Snake thriller in the film and missed, while the promo effort was going for camp. I don’t know any movie that is both camp and a taught thriller. (A wisecrack here and there in a thriller, while welcome relief, is still not what I would consider enough of a camp factor to qualify.)
That's where I think it missed for me.
I've found the energy of an audience can HUGELY affect my moviegoing experience, so in that regard I really lucked out with Snakes on a Plane. I did see Pirates 2 again this past weekend since my mom was in town and she hadn't gotten to go yet, and people had brought BABIES and really small children for whom the movie was entirely inappropriate, and until we moved to a seat by grown-ups only, it really dulled the experience.
Maybe Chris does have a point, MKLB. I'm capable of missing a lot. I can think of a celebrity as a brand. I can think of a movie studio or director as a brand. I can think of genres as brands. But I'm having a hard time as thinking of individual films as brands unless as an amalgam of all the preceding. If we're defining branding as something with an authentic voice that delivers to its known audience, the place for brandy thinking is in the creation process, I'd think. And then you get into the creative versus marketing question of whether it's best to give people what they want or give them something they've never seen. My head hurts.But I'll take the sno-globes in memory of Aunt Mary.
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