Studio Goes Under the Radar with In-Your-Face Marketing of Brüno
Posted 06.02.09 by reelz
Closing the book on all sorts of speculation, MTV has finally fessed up that the notrorious Brüno-Eminem incident the other night was staged. In the bigger picture though, it's all part of the innovative under-the-radar marketing campaign that Universal has cooked up for its most outrageous product, according to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal.
The studio has, the Journal reports, skipped most of the trappings -- and expense -- of a normal marketing campaign for Brüno. It's all about putting into practice what it learned from Sasha Baron Cohen's previous project, explains industry analyst Robert Marich:
One of the things about Borat was that it surprised everyone.... It had a much bigger opening than tracking surveys indicated because it had such a viral buzz. The challenge here for Universal is to sustain that with Brüno, which isn't always easy with high-concept movies because they're not so fresh the second time around.
Given the huge amount of gossip swirling around Brüno's latest antics, it seems that the studio may well be on its way to overcoming that hurdle.