The Marketing Doctor Says:
Indiana Jones Movie Rollout Represents A Revolution in Marketing!

Is the Indiana Jones poster above a) real; b) fake or c) doesn’t matter?  The answer is b).  Yup, it’s a fake made by an adoring fan and distributed months ago!

The answer certainly isn’t c) doesn’t matter, because for the Marketing Doctor what this poster says about marketing matters a lot!  Lucasfilm, always at the vanguard of marketing, has done something with the latest Indiana Jones that is again breaking new ground!!!

I can never say it enough times to counter all the anti-marketing cynics out there: marketing doesn’t create demand; it identifies needs and then seeks to satisfy them!!!

Lucasfilm knows this.  Listen to one of its top honchos talk about the marketing plan for the new Indiana Jones movie (courtesy Variety):

"It's been 19 years since the last film, and we are sensing a huge pent-up demand for everything Indy," said Howard Roffman, prexy of Lucas Licensing, which is overseeing the deals. "The people who grew up with Indiana Jones have become today's parents.

Huge, pent-up demand!!!  In other words, need!!!  They know their target market is out there –and what a target market!  Everyone from kids to parents— so the job is how to reach it!

And that’s where the marketing is the new advertising idea comes in!

You might have seen some commercials on TV or a few trailers in the movie theater … but not nearly as many as you might expect.  Why???  Because Lucasfilm isn’t trusting the fate of its franchise to the old marketing model!!!

So far there’s been: the brilliant launch at Comic-con in Las Vegas for all the diehard sci-fi/adventure fans (with the assurance that Karen Allen (an icon from the first movie) was back)…this announcement mobilized the core target market; the hugely successful viral video (discussed on this site some weeks back) that was likely eagerly distributed by the core target market; the carefully controlled insider “peeks” at the movie in progress (reminding everyone that Harrison Ford made a name for himself doing most of his own stunts); and, finally and most importantly in marketing terms, all sorts of cross-promotions (video games, toys, books, candy, burgers, you name it! –even Legos has pre-launched their Indiana Jones line!).

The last part is what I call marketing through merchandising –building visibility and market momentum for your core product while making money from it!  What can be better than that!  Marketing through merchandising trumps publicity because you can control where, when and how your core product is seen by the target market –whereas with publicity alone it’s a roll of the dice … you might get your product’s name out there, but there are so many things that can blunt the deployment and effectiveness of your message!

Anyone interested in the new marketing can learn a lot from this new movie –how LucasFilm isn’t getting bent out of shape about the “fake” poster above and how they’re pre-releasing the merchandising for the sake of marketing!  But those of you who have products or services that had a solid target market, but haven’t tapped it for a long time, can learn the most here!

Part of the reason the rollout for the new Indiana Jones took more than a year is that it takes time to reach everyone for whom this brand means something, but for whom it has been on the back burner for a long time (19 years since the last one!)!   Even if your brand isn’t as recognizable as Indiana Jones –and whose is?— you should take heart from the fact that once you’ve identified the need and a way to fill it, the process to engage your target market will mainly depend using all the marketing tools at your disposal and building a lot of patience into the equation!

And, remember, it’s always easier when you keep marketing in mind!

Here’s some more info:

http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/06/18/lucasfilm-promises-marketing-blitzkrieg-for-indiana-jones-4/
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117967127.html?categoryId=13&cs=1

And two other takes:

http://screenrant.com/archives/indiana-jones-stealth-marketin-1561.html
http://www.slashfilm.com/2008/04/10/new-indiana-jones-4-poster-real-or-fake/