Marty Supreme Marketing and Timothee Chalamet Fatigue

     

    Speaking as a Gen Z consumer flocking back to long form content, my return to movie theaters was fueled by leaving subscription services like Netflix in the dust. At the same time, as someone with a phone, I have not been able to dodge the orange explosion craze that has defined the marketing for Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme. After seeing Timothee Chalamet post a seemingly screen recorded meeting in which he articulates the wild marketing campaign of a bright orange blimp over co-star Tyler the Creator’s music festival, Camp Flog Gnaw, to a not-so-convinced marketing team.

Set in the 1950s, the film follows a young Marty Mauser as he pursues his dream of becoming a champion table tennis player. Starring major names such as Timothée Chalamet, Gwyneth Paltrow, and musician Tyler the Creator, the film’s star power combined with its unconventional promotional strategy has left Hollywood heads spinning over its controversial movie campaign.

The article, “Timothée Chalamet and the era-fication of film marketing” by Cambridge University author Daniella Adetoye truly articulates how film marketing has changed in the past years, using Timothée Chalamet’s Marty Supreme promotional campaign as a prime example. Movie-goers have rendered traditional press tours outdated, as the classic interview and press tours are simply just not enough to capture audience attention and are considered one of many. Simply talking about a movie cannot carry the film to relevancy. Instead, “era” based and personality driven marketing has become the best approach, with Chalamet’s team packaging this film as a distinct cultural moment fit with its own visual identity, immersive pop ups, fashion drops such as the limited edition jacket, and livestreams that resemble cultural events more than advertisements. Photographs of celebrities around LA and New York being captured by paparazzi in the exclusive Marty Supreme jacket amplified this film’s allure in a covert way. As well as that, audience engagement has become dependent on the creation of the act of participation and spectacle, as fans no longer simply watch trailers but actively engage in the hype around the film through memes, exclusivity, scarcity, and clips. When it comes to Marty Supreme, the film itself takes a back seat to the cultural moment created by its marketing, truly articulating how far the movie biz has moved beyond traditional methods of promotion.

The value proposition of the marketing team behind Marty Supreme is intentionally ambiguous. With a wide range of unconventional promotional tactics, such as appearing on Druski’s talent show livestream, showing up on The Tonight Show alongside performers wearing oversized orange ping pong ball heads, and flying a bright orange blimp over Camp Flog Gnaw, the campaign naturally leaves consumers asking, “What the hell is this movie even about?” Instead of clearly communicating the plot of the movie, the strategy prioritizes curiosity and confusion. The lack of a traditional value proposition becomes the value of the movie itself, as the campaign rests upon confusion and spectacle to spark conversation, buzz, and keep the film at the center of cultural discourse.

The marketing of Marty Supreme has left some consumers feeling misled by the over the top, “dream big,” iconography of the campaign. Finding it to be cocky and unnecessary for the promotion of the movie, fans are even feeling fatigue with seeing Chalamet all over their feed. In defense of the movie, Chalamet’s response in a Variety interview was, “This is in the spirit of Marty, and I feel like this is ultimately an original film at a time when original movies aren’t really put out,” Chalamet said when asked about the press tour. “It’s a movie about the pursuit of a dream. I’m leaving it on the field. Whether it’s the merch or the Zoom or the media appearances, I’m trying to get this out in the biggest way possible. In the spirit of Marty Mauser.” This challenge of responding to the backlash of viewers confused by the marketing of a movie about a jewish pin-pong player movie, I feel like simply wasn’t enough. If I were put in the position of managing the marketing, I would go along with the over the top marketing for the beginning stages before the release of the movie, and after opening weekend would implement a second trailer in which the movie was more articulately explained. I would set up classic press junkets in which the secondary cast was able to get more spotlight and speak on behalf of the movie, set up for those more viral moments. I would schedule interviews in which that secondary cast was able to do fun games with each other based around the movie, in which the viewers could engage with the cast members and learn more about the contents of the film. I believe that in totality, the issue with over the top marketing is that you lose that relationship that stars have with their audiences, and would attempt to close that gap in relatability audiences enjoy with their favorite actor/actress. 

Overall, I think that Timothee Chalamet’s approach to method acting his way through his press tour was both a clever, and unique approach to marketing and branding this movie, but there must be a point at which he breaks character to connect with his audience. The solution provided by the marketing team to allow Timothee to do interviews, like Variety in which he explains why he did it, seemed like a half-baked solution to the backlash. 

I learned so much about the investment in marketing on behalf of film, and how we can breathe new life into marketing regardless of how seemingly sunken into tradition we are in a specific industry.