This Week, AOP Goes To The Movies.

Movie marketing is a category of advertising that has a rich history.

Most movie trailers these days have the same old structure - some quick cutting of the best scenes, and a voiceover from one of the three guys that voice all movie trailers.

But - some movies have been marketed in highly inventive ways.

Alfred Hitchcock almost always created trailers that were very unique. As was Mr. Hitchcock's way, he appeared in most of them, taking us on a tour of either the set, the locations, or in the case of The Birds, a tutorial on birds. It wasn't so much a lecture on why birds would want to wreak revenge on mankind, so much as a way to set up the premise for his most unusual film.

One of the B-movies of the 70s, Billy Jack, was, in fact, a groundbreaking movie. It changed the way movies were marketed for all time. Director Tom Laughlin sued Warner Bros. for "mis-distribution" and won, and the damages he sought forced the studio to buy huge volumes of television advertising. That had never really been done before - as most movie trailers were shown in theatres only. Laughlin also "block booked" certain theatres in strategic cities - meaning, he bought-out the theatre so he could keep his movie in the theatres long enough for the movie marketing to kick in. It was a revolutionary way to market, and it made Billy Jack one the the most successful movies of that year.

It also led to the success of Jaws. Universal studios employed the Billy Jack strategy and did a HUGE television advertising buy, and the resulting frenzy over the film helped make it the first movie to earn over $100 million dollars in domestic box office receipts.

Then, skip ahead a few decades and you come to The Blair Witch Project. Here was a film that was shot on a shoe-string budget, and marketed almost solely online. It, too, ended up breaking the $100 million dollar mark. And remember - it achieved this kind of success online while still pre-dating YouTube, Twitter and Facebook. Remarkable.

Paranormal Activity is a case study in using Twitter and Facebook. The studio chose this low-budget movie to try an experiement: Could a movie with no stars be marketed using social media, and break the $100 million mark? They chose eight major cities, staged free midnight screenings, then installed computers in the theatre lobbies to encourage fans to Twitter, Facebook and blog on their way out.

It worked. As a matter of fact, the genius of the midnight screenings was that it is the quietest time online, so the Tweets that went out during that quiet time dominated Twitter, so it pushed the movie mentions near the top of the Twitter's trending list.

All in all, movie marketing is a fascinating study.

Don't forget to check out all the movie trailers and posters we talk about on this week's show (as well as bonus material) on our website: www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion