Many movie studios have been coming up with increasingly creative ideas to market their upcoming films on social media, and one film that took the digital world by storm recently is M3GAN, a horror movie centered around a robotic doll named after the film’s title.
M3GAN first made headlines after the first trailer for it was released, featuring one scene where the doll does an unsettling dance that is very similar to ones that you would see on TikTok and “as of early February, TikToks with the hashtag #M3GAN, mainly featuring people recreating the dance, have garnered over 1.8 billion views” (Sherry, 2023). In addition, the trailers for M3GAN were also set to songs that had traction on TikTok, which greatly enhanced the likelihood for it to resonate with audiences that are online and are aware of trends that this movie capitalized on (Sherry, 2023). A huge part of social media marketing now is to create opportunities for people to insert themselves into your brand’s narrative. People want to be a part of brand stories, and giving them opportunities like the M3GAN trailer where they can recreate the dance is a way for them to feel more connected to the title character of the film and have a stronger connection with your product. No doubt, it will make the invitation for them to go see your movie much more enticing.
Additionally, the M3GAN Twitter account also went viral because of its tweets and interactions with Chucky, another well known horror doll with its own successful film franchise.
Seeing the film’s Twitter account have fun and go outside of the box to also poke fun and insert itself in other really popular trends such as the “Gentleminions” trend that went viral last summer not only shows how creative the marketing team is, but its marketing tactics also lend it a sense of relatability and “down-to-earthness” that helps to decrease that gap that we tend to sense between us as consumers, and large brands. There’s a reason why marketing this way garners more engagement, because it piques people’s interests more than a simple poster or post telling people to buy movie tickets— it extends characters’ lives and personalities beyond the screen into real life that consumers live in.
The work ended up paying off. M3GAN has grossed over $167 million worldwide with a 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating since its release at the beginning of 2023 (Weiss, 2023). It also made waves on social media platforms; “Ahead of the opening, RelishMix spotted all the heat on M3GAN with its 1.5 billion social media universe across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok” (D’Alessandro, 2023). M3GAN gave its own take on existing trends and made the connection between the film and these trends seamless, which contributed to its success.
References:
https://www.inc.com/ben-sherry/want-to-go-viral-how-the-hit-movie-m3gan-conquered-social-media-marketing.html
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/jason-blum-explains-why-he-thinks-m3gan-was-a-success
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