The “Hereditary” horror movie made 8X its production cost! What helped its trending buzz?
Thursday: Gorillas of Guerilla Marketing
Guerrilla Marketing is a lot of things.
It’s exciting. It’s not necessarily expensive. It’s unconventional. It’s interesting. It helps you to create buzz about your brand. It enables a direct engagement between your brand and target market.
In my years in the business industry, I know Word of Mouth (WOM) and generating buzz are just two of the best ways to raise awareness about a specific brand.
As an independent professional, exercising your creativity is beneficial for your brand as it will lead you to formulate fun campaigns that your target market will not find boring.
Think outside of the box every once in a while. It would be good to refresh your target market’s memory about the nature of your brand and what it can do for them.
Get your inspiration from different brands’ Guerrilla Marketing campaigns!
Keep reading to find out how this horror movie appealed to a lot of moviegoers and prominent figures, even those who are not-so-fond of scary movies.
I hope you find this week’s company spotlight interesting.
Miles Everson
CEO, MBO Partners
Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute
Gorillas of Guerilla Marketing
Hereditary is labeled as one of the scariest horror films in recent years.
The Rolling Stone even said that it was the best horror movie of the year (2018)!
We’re sure that a lot of horror movie junkies have watched… and ENJOYED it.
The difference between Hereditary and other horror movies is that even people who weren’t big horror fans also watched and kept talking about Hereditary.
This isn’t an easy feat.
Marketing and promoting a horror movie is a challenging task. The audience is usually limited to a certain type of moviegoer.
How did the promoters of Hereditary contribute in making this film a must-watch success?
They created a lot of buzz online with a guerilla stunt they pulled on the attendees of one of the first midnight screenings.
The day after that group of people saw the movie…
…very creepy dolls were left right outside their hotel doors.
That’s all it took.
Scary and disturbing… and it definitely made a lasting impression!
Very much like the movie itself.
Well-known people in the business were some of the lucky few to receive the dolls, like director Barry Jenkins and news contributor, Eric Vespe.
This was one example of a simple yet clever act of guerilla marketing.
It not only made people talk about the movie and the promotional stunt online, but it also made people curious enough to actually watch it in the cinemas.
It made a lasting impression and shocked so many people, enough for them to react big time.
As a result, Hereditary made $13 million US at the box office on its FIRST weekend alone.
The cost to produce this movie was $10 million US. They got the production budget back on their first weekend!
United States and Canada = Hereditary grossed $44 million US
Other countries combined = Hereditary grossed $35.3 million US
A total worldwide gross revenue of $79.3 million US—about 8 times the production cost!
Now that’s effective.
Leading brands (and huge box office hits) use guerilla marketing to induce shock and create a lasting impression on their target audience without having to spend massive amounts of money.
It looks easy BUT it takes a level of creativity and skill to be effective. This is not just something you, as an independent professional, can easily do that’s 100% successful 100% of the time. It has to be planned out well and executed properly.
Guerilla marketing helps businesses generate an intense amount of buzz among consumers while remaining profitable.
Time to think about leaving creepy dolls outside of people’s doorsteps.
Hope you’ve found this week’s guerrilla marketing insight interesting and helpful.
Stay tuned for next Thursday’s Gorillas of Guerrilla!
