10 Creative Ways Movies Got You To See Them
3. Lotso Fakery – Toy Story 3 (2010)
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Much like The Simpsons, animated Disney-Pixar flick Toy Story 3 was pretty much guaranteed to be a big box office earner, given the longevity of the first two films and their continued prevalence in Disney marketing, media, merchandise, and attractions. Nonetheless, with a whole 11 years since the release of 1999’s Toy Story 2, there needed to be at least a bit of attention put into figuring out how to capture the now-adult original viewers and a whole new young audience at the same time.
As a result, the Toy Story team sought to make full use of the kind of technology and connectivity that wasn’t really there last time around. They created a YouTube channel under the name of MrCrazycommercials, which for all intents and purposes looks like any other YouTuber. Onto this, they uploaded a series of grainy, VHS-quality, 1980s toy commercials, engaging people’s nostalgia while slipping a bit of creative marketing in under the door.
The Trojan Horse of viral campaigns, this ploy allowed the team to drop in their own fake advert for Lots-O-Huggin Bear, a character from Toy Story 3, made to look like an authentic ‘80s ad. Needless to say, this drove fans wild when they discovered that it was a fake, and were able to tie it to the upcoming film, instilling in them an incorrigible intrigue that helped drive the film’s popularity with all age groups.