Production companies used to release a trailer for a new movie, and the actors did interviews. That was the entire marketing strategy. Recently, however, movie marketing took on a life all of its own. Every film hopes to outdo the previous ones when it comes to marketing; Disney's Deadpool and Wolverine is no exception.
We were all there for the year of Barbenheimer. The Barbie movie's marketing had about the same production value as the film itself. It was huge! But that was only the start when it came to movie marketing…
The next film to jump on the insane marketing bandwagon is Disney's Deadpool and Wolverine.
To be honest, having Hugh Jackman as Wolverine one more time pretty much sells itself. On the other hand, we were crazy to expect anything less from Ryan Reynolds.
So get ready! Alrika Möller from media update is slashing through the best marketing moments of Deadpool and Wolverine.
Creating Hype
This whole marketing adventure started back in September of 2022. Ryan Reynolds made a video. The video ended up going absolutely mega-viral! What was the video?
Well, it starts out funny with Reynolds talking about how hard it is to come up with a good idea for the third Deadpool movie.
It ends with Ryan — very casually — asking Hugh Jackman if he would be willing to play Wolverine one more time. Jackman then just replies with, "Yeah, sure, Ryan."
That is it. That is all it took. And so the Deadpool and Wolverine movie was announced.
The video had the perfect Deadpool-like tone, while still remaining funny and simple. That is why the ad got as much global attention as it did. They created hype for the film two years before it came out, and they kept going from there.
Traditional Trailers
The concept of movie trailers is not a new thing. The first ever movie trailer was released in 1913. But most films have one, maybe two, occasionally three trailers. For this film, they released as many as humanly possible.
No really, there is a lot of them!
Some people feel like they went overboard, but the truth is that it worked well to help build up the online hype. Every time a new trailer was released, at least 10 other videos popped up to discuss the trailer and analyse the easter eggs.
The steady flow of new trailers created interest that increased in the months leading up to the film's release. The first trailer was released in February of 2024, and the last trailer was released on Tuesday, 16 July. That is precisely 10 days before the film's release.
Utilising Controversy
When Dune 2 revealed the official popcorn bucket for its film, it sparked quite the online controversy. People had a few things to say about the unusual shape of the top of the bucket.
Ryan Reynolds was not going to let a controversy go without capitalising on it in some way. He took to X to announce the equally controversial Wolverine bucket.
Since film popcorn buckets were already trending, it created a nice little marketing moment for them to jump on and promote their own upcoming film.
It was piggybacking at its finest!
Collaboration Genius
Marketing 101 tells us that the more people you can reach, the better. A great way to do that is through collaboration. That way, both brands or companies can benefit from each other's audiences.
Some marketing genius over at Marvel Studios e-mailed just about any and every brand they can think of in hopes of doing a collab — and a big chunk of them said YES!
The fast-food company Jack in the Box created a campaign with a few Deadpool ads. One ad features Ryan Reynolds wearing a Jack Suit with the Deadpool mask and Jack in the Box wearing the Deadpool suit with the Jack mask.
Another one features Deadpool crashing through their restaurant and then apologising for the destruction. In an attempt to make it up to them, he ends up wearing a Deadpool Jack mask while promoting one of the items on their menu.
Another great collab happened when people or Heinz noticed that Deadpool and Wolverine were red and yellow like ketchup and mustard. Heinz then created a whole campaign with the tagline "Now You Can't Unsee It".
Heinz created billboards that stood right next to the movie's own billboards.
Heinz created a whole campaign encouraging people to accessorise its ketchup and mustard bottles to look like Deadpool and Wolverine using limited edition collectables.
The main event was the movie trailer-like advert that started off as the normal movie trailer. It ended up having Ryan Reynolds do a classic Deadpool voiceover while they switched the character names to say "Heinz Ketchup" and "Heinz Mustard". They even had image flashes of the condiment bottles.
Magnificent Merch
While this could technically count as another collaboration, it is too good to not give its own point, because... Well, you'll see.
Xbox, the Microsoft gaming company, released its Deadpool and Wolverine gaming consoles to celebrate the new film. The word most commonly used to describe them is 'cheeky'... Because they are cheeky in every sense of the word.
The merch announcement originally only had the Deadpool console, but fans liked the new merchandise so much that Xbox ended up creating a Wolverine one as well.
Nothing says “watch my movie” like bottom-shaped controllers. You do, however, run the risk of becoming the butt of the joke.
Social Takeover
Social media is a good way to promote just about anything; and since this film is Deadpool's first instalment as part of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe), they obviously went all out.
The social media strategy for this film included changing the profile pictures of some of the official Instagram accounts for Marvel characters to Deadpool versions of these characters.
The idea was to create animations that looked like Deadpool himself drew the pictures and hacked these Instagram accounts. Naturally, this went viral super quickly as a lot of these characters are very iconic — and their accounts have a lot of followers.
Some of my favourites are Deadpool Captain America and Deadpool Black Widow, but they are all pretty great.
A good movie trailer and a couple of talk show appearances are not cutting it anymore. If you want to get people really excited, take a page out of Deadpool's comic book and try different things.
Marketing should be anything but boring!
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*Image courtesy of @deadpoolmovie on Instagram