Marketing Animated Films

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Fire Skittles!

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In the past year, I have seen a few movies that I was not interested in but enjoyed them anyway. These have all been animated movies! Why is it so hard to market animated movies? Examples of badly marketed include:

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: From the trailers, I expected a Dreamworks-like movie with references and unfunny attempts at jokes. I was pleasently surprised when it turned out the movie was hilarious and had heart.

Astro Boy: The trailers made it look like a comedy with unfunny jokes. It turned out it was an action-drama with a few bursts of comedy.

The Princess and the Frog: The return to traditional animation should have been marketed, not a dumb kiss! They also have could marketed the fun characters or the music. Making the main focusing of marketing being a kiss turned me off because like most guys, I'm not interested in a movie about a kiss.
 
The target audience is kids and... believe it or not, they do dig that kind of stuff. The target audience does not care about traditional animation, so that kind of marketing is just inefficient.

However, I do think Astroboy could have been handled better. I say this because the excuse for the target audience doesn't work when 7 year old me would not have been impressed by the 'funny' trailer, but adored the action. I watched Gundam and DBZ as a kid, I fail to see how that was hard to market. :/


 
The trailers to the new Christmas Carol movie made it look like a slapstick filled goof-fest. I haven't seen the movie, but I know its anything but that.
 
I agree that Astro Boy was horribly marketed. The trailers made little sense, and there was no indication of how touching and fun the movie was. If I had been in charge of the advertising, I would have had the trailer's voiceover say "From the producers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" (that would have grabbed some attention), and also say something like "An icon of the 20th Century is reborn into the 21st" (and shown a clip of Astro being activated). If I wanted to create a trailer using Astro and Cora, I would have had it say "When a robot who wants to be a real boy, meets a real girl, sparks will fly" and show the scene where Cora snarks at Astro a little (as she did when they first met, because she thought he was a snob). I would have used a bit of the scene where Dr. Tenma talks about why he gave Astro so much weaponry - "I won't lose him again", and then shown Astro with the laser cannon and butt guns and so on, to put the child/warrior aspect of Astro in context. And I would have used some quotes from the movie critics who liked the film, particularly Roger Ebert's (who like the movie better than Kung Fu Panda, and who has some clout). All in all, Summit did a cruddy job of promoting the film. Too bad, because it's really one of the best animated films this year, and my personal favorite.
 
Actually, they did market the return of traditional animation in the theatical trailers. The first one I saw had a flashback of the Renissance, with little sketches turning into full blown fancy memorable scenes of Belle waltzing and whatnot, ending with Tiana on the balcony.
I know the kiss was pushed a lot, but I don't remember it being the main focus of the trailers, especially the later ones.
 
Yes, it's mainly a drama/horror. The trailers for A Christmas Carol turned me off from it actually. It made it look like it was made for 3-D exclusive. I was surprised when it was still good in 2-D.



But the first trailer is the most important, because its the first thing the audience sees involving the movie. THe main reason The Princess and the Frog is failing is most likely that people might not think it's a movie the entire family will enjoy.
 
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