'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' (2011): Case Study - Marketing Campaign

'The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' | Edited from Movie Marketing Madness
Post Published: 20 December 2011 Author: Chris

The new American remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. based on a Swedish novel and the first story in a trilogy this version is directed by David Fincher, with Roomey Mara starring as the enigmatic Lisbeth Salander who must work with Mikael Blomkvist (Daniel Craig), a journalist.

The Posters
The first poster was a tad bit NSFW and I’m amazed this was released as an official one-sheet. The image has Mara standing in front of Craig, his arm draped around her. But she’s completely naked, and while the image starts to fade out below her waist and one nipple is covered by Craig’s elbow, the other one – while obscured by the title – is still clearly visible. So the studio is clearly selling the sexualized version of the character. An international version of the same image would move the title treatment completely so you could more clearly see nipples.

A second poster was a bit more traditional. It shows Mara’s head with Craig’s image within that and some floral patterns surrounding him, a icy looking setting in the background. There are two bits of copy – “What is hidden in snow, comes forth in the thaw” that tie in to some online viral action that’s outlined below. The monochromatic nature of the poster makes it all the more striking and indeed this does look like a high-end piece of art photography. It’s very cool.

The Trailers
The first trailer starts off down a long snowy road and then just gets montagey. We see all sorts of things – people being shot at, people coughing, people running down streets, people getting out of cars – all no more than a second in length and all backed by an industrial rock remix of a Led Zeppelin song. It’s funky, it’s frantic and it works to tell audiences that this is likely not a watered down American version of the original film.

The next trailer slowed things down a bit and actually went into the story. We see Salandar delivering her report on Blomkvist and his personal life. He is summoned to do his own investigation into the murder of someone’s wife. The two are eventually paired together to investigate that murder, an investigation that takes all sorts of twists and turns as they’re obstructed at every end and each one continues to deal with their own issues.

Just a couple weeks out from release an eight-minute trailer was released that had previously been seen as part of the promotions for the film’s soundtrack. The long-form nature of this spot obviously allows for more of the story to be shown and more depth.

Online
If you do nothing after the official website loads you’ll be treated to a slide show of a dozen or more images from the movie rotating around.

After you do that a bit you can click the Menu and dive in to the site’s content, the first of which is “Characters,” where you can learn more about them and the actors who portray them. “Photos” has some very mysterious looking pictures. “Videos” then has the trailers.

There was also a website and Twitter account setup called Mouth Taped Shut that featured set photos. Eventually the “viral” campaign would end by leading people to early screenings of the movie designed to spark some pre-release word-of-mouth.

Advertising and Cross-Promotions
In what many saw as an extremely odd promotion, retailer H&M created a line of clothing designed to help you achieve the look Lisbeth Salandar sports in the movie.

TV spots were also created and run that introduced us to the characters and some of their motivations, showing lots of action and drama unfolding without (naturally) going in to all the different levels of deception and psychosis that are in play here since that’s barely contained in the full trailers.

Media and Publicity
Some of the first publicity for the movie came in the form of a profile of Mara in particular and the movie in general (W, February 2011) that featured some of the first looks at the actress in character in a variety of provocative shots.

After a bit of a break then things really heated up around the first of June when a European trailer was “leaked” and started everyone’s tongue a-wagging (Los Angeles Times, 6/1/11). The trailer featured lots of violence and a brief bit of nudity.

A feature interview (Esquire, 7/6/11) with Craig gave some insights into the actor’s approach to violence, what sort of things he does in his down time and what he thought of the movie’s themes and such. Craig continued to weigh in on the subject of the film’s violence as well as the controversial poster featuring a topless Mara.

Overall
There’s a lot of good stuff and some very engaging content in this campaign, but my concern is that it’s speaking almost exclusively to two audiences: First, existing fans of the book and the original film (admittedly a sizable group) and Two, fans of David Fincher.

For many more examples visit the site here.