Creating a Tie-in to a TV Show or Movie
You know that the hot motion picture — usually the one that was number
one at the box office over the weekend — gets an incredible amount of public
attention for a short period, usually a few weeks. The highest-rated new TV
show of the season gets a similarly disproportionate share of buzz for a
somewhat longer period — up to several months. By creating a campaign
that ties your product to these popular big- and little-screen attractions, you
can siphon off some of their buzz and apply it to your own story for greatly
expanded media coverage.
For example, when the movie Coneheads was hot, we created a promotion for
a chain of sandwich shops in which any customer coming in to a store and
claiming to have seen an alien would get a free sandwich.
When Regis Philbin’s Who Wants to Be a Millionaire became a hit, we did a
promotion for a client that linked Millionaire to fitness — by offering to make
you fit enough and strong enough to beat up a millionaire.