Movie's marketing strategy: Simply go for the green

A Super Bowl commercial has become an important marketing tool.
By BARRY KOLTNOW
KNIGHT RIDDER TRIBUNE
Marketing a summer blockbuster has become a science.
It's not just about the amount of money thrown into a marketing campaign. It's also about the timing.
With so much at stake, the campaigns begin at least a year in advance, when a studio might sneak a brief trailer into the nation's movie theaters. Because most summer action movies use computer-generated special effects that are so time-consuming that they cannot be completed until just before the opening date, those advance trailers can't show much of the movie.
But that's not the point of those advance trailers. They are intended only to tease the audience, to get them excited about the prospect of seeing that movie next summer.
Aiming for Super Bowl
The most important advance marketing tool in a studio's arsenal has become the Super Bowl commercial. These movie teasers have become as much a part of the Super Bowl extravaganza as the game, the halftime show and, of course, the new beer commercials.
Last January, all eyes were on the Hulk, the 15-foot, 4,000-pound, computer-generated green comic book character that would be the star of one of the summer's most anticipated movies, "Hulk," which opens Friday.
This was the first glimpse of what the classic comic character was going to look like on the big screen. But it didn't work out exactly how the studio and filmmakers planned it. Or did it?
On the surface, the Super Bowl teaser appeared to be a miserable failure. Instead of thrilling the movie's core audience, it disappointed them. Internet chat rooms exploded with a round of boos from die-hard Hulk fans. They called the green creation "cheesy." They said it looked dumb and fake.
By all appearances, the Super Bowl spot was a marketing disaster.
However, those responsible for the trailer insist now that it wasn't the monumental failure that it appeared to be at the time.
Knew of fans' discontent
Gale Hurd, a summer blockbuster producer with impeccable credentials ("Aliens," "Armageddon" and both "Terminator" films), said filmmakers were well aware of the fans' dissatisfaction.
"We read the boards," she said. "The pundits are going to have their say on the Internet. People love to weigh in with their own examination of things.
"It wasn't a positive response at first, but our feeling was, 'Isn't it great that people are talking about this movie?"'
According to Avi Arad, another producer on the film, as soon as people understood that they were seeing only the initial stages in the creation of the monster, the chat rooms did a complete reversal.
"For every person who first called it cheesy, there were 10 people who responded favorably after we explained that," he said. "It was no different than what happened on 'X-Men.'"
Didn't blame 'em
Dennis Muren, the nine-time Oscar-winning visual effects master, said he really didn't blame the Hulk fans for reacting the way they did when the hastily put-together Super Bowl commercial aired.
"What they were seeing was such an early rendering of the character," he explained. "The color wasn't right, and it certainly didn't help that they speeded up the action in the trailer.
Muren believes Hulk fans missed Lou Ferrigno, who played the green monster for four seasons on the TV show "The Incredible Hulk."
"But our Hulk was always going to be modeled more after the actual comic book character and not the TV show. That's how Ang [director Ang Lee] wanted it. The best way to do that was through CG [computer-generated effects]. If the Hulk was supposed to be 6-feet-tall in this movie, then we could have used an actor.
"But there aren't any 15-foot, 4,000-pound actors."