Listening to the reaction of teens who had attended a screening of Oliver Stone’s new “World Trade Center” movie, Paramount Pictures officials decided to make TV ads just for them.
The promos feature music from rock group Coldplay to get their attention, and have a slogan that relates the Sept. 11 terror attacks to their own lives.
“Every generation has a defining moment,” a voiceover in the ads intones. “This was ours,” words on the screen say.The film - opening nationwide tomorrow - recounts the 9/11 rescue of Port Authority Police Officers John McLoughlin and William Jimeno, the last men to come out alive from the Twin Towers’ ruins. It stars Nicolas Cage as McLoughlin and Michael Peña as Jimeno.
Paramount plans to donate 10% of the box-office receipts from tomorrow through Sunday to the World Trade Center Memorial Foundation and three other 9/11-related charities.
The gut-wrenching subject matter has Hollywood wondering how big a box-office draw it will be, despite rave reviews. The first 9/11-themed film, “United 93,” rang up U.S. ticket sales of just $31.5 million.
Paramount test-screened “World Trade Center” in Minneapolis. Later, teens at a focus group spoke about their sense of personal connection to the movie. One girl used the phrase “defining moment” to describe 9/11.
“They said it was the most significant event of their lifetimes,” Gerry Rich, Paramount’s president of worldwide marketing, told the Daily News.
He kept TV commercials that were already in the can, but asked for new ones to make the movie’s $35 million marketing campaign more relevant to teens.
Rich and his colleagues listened to more than 200 music samples to find something that would sound right for a commercial airing on MTV. And the music had to be “respectful, yet insinuate hope, optimism and emotion,” he said.
They picked a snippet of melody from Coldplay’s song “Fix You,” which ends with the words, “Lights will guide you home.”
In contrast, the ads written for general audiences use orchestral music as background.
But they pack an emotional wallop anyway - with a rapid-fire barrage of dramatic moments.
Visually, the two spots also have notable differences. The teen-focused one includes an image of a trapped Officer Jimeno scribbling “I U” on a scrap of paper.
It also offers quick images of intimate moments with the wives.
The general audience ad contains a more complete linear recounting of the entire plot in 30 seconds.
Both kinds of commercials run on a broad array of broadcast and cable channels - though Paramount’s being careful to keep them off prime-time shows that younger children watch, and Saturday-morning kiddie programs.
Also, Paramount nixed billboards and other outdoor ads in the metro area - as well as Washington, where the Pentagon was attacked, and Boston, where doomed flights took off.
“It’s not just an ordinary movie,” Rich said. “We’re trying to be sensitive to the families, and people who were affected by the day.”
Source: http://www.nydailynews.com
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