Horton Hears A Dollar (Or Two)

Fresh off a hugely successful opening weekend, in which the family friendly animated film took in over $45 million in box office receipts, Dr. Suess' Horton Hears A Who! continues to dominate in its second weekend of release. While it's not unusual for a family oriented animated film to do well in the box office for an extended period of time, I thought it would be interesting to look at the film's marketing efforts to see if it was doing anything different to appeal to potential movie goers.

From what I've seen, the bulk of the film's marketing efforts seemed to be centered around 30 second television trailers. They've been okay, not special enough to separate from the pack, but not bad enough to do the film any harm. That said, the marketing team behind Horton have made efforts to branch out into more creative means for marketing a film. Probably the biggest one was an appearance on Fox's American Idol, which comprised an animated lead-in to the show, and a guest appearance by Jim Carrey. Check out the video below:



Obviously, getting onto the show itself rather then settling for a 30 second spot was a major coup for the Horton marketing team (aided of course by the Fox relationship). The appearance secured a larger viewing audience that devoted more attention to the ad, and thus engaged with it on a deeper level. Similar to the Idol appearance, the marketing team has also secured giveaways on local news stations -- again, check out the video below:



Horton also has a nice, engaging website. Aside from the standard character bios and production stills, the site also has a cool feature where you can create and adopt your own who. After creating your who, you can even download an adoption certificate, and embed your who on various popular web sites - check out my sidebar for an example.

I like that the team behind Horton has taken the time to be creative and design a mostly clever campaign. Clearly, they did the required work for a successful release, and are now reaping the benefits.