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“Holy dancing queen, Batman!”

Chances are, if you are over the age of 13, you went to see a movie this weekend. It’s not just that The Dark Knight broke the majority of box office earning records; Hollywood made history by having its most successful weekend of all time bringing in $253 million for the top twelve movies.

Not only can Hollywood appeal to younger (and probably masculine) audiences, the second place movie, Mamma Mia, successfully targeted everyone who didn’t care to see Dark Knight.

Sure Mia’s weekend earnings of $27.6 million is no where near Dark Knight’s $155.34 million, but that still makes it the #247 movie in opening weekend history. Not bad, considering the way the two films were marketed entirely differently.

The marketing of both films not only gives us clues to their success but how to advertise to dissimilar demographics.

The Dark Knight’s aggressive viral marketing campaign began over a year ago with the website IbelieveinHarveyDent.com. The fictional website was set up for Gotham City’s district attorney. The website, along with nine others that came along, let fans participate in the hype by working for clues by calling phone numbers, emailing, and completing puzzles, apparently given to them by the Joker.

The first website, IbelieveinHarveyDent.com, eventually was “vandalized” by the Joker, complete with blood stains, faces drawn all over pictures of Harvey Dent, and “Ha ha” being scribbled all over the homepage.

Scavenger hunts were also set up all over the United States for fans to uncover clues to reveal a new photograph and audio clip of the Joker on the third website, RorysDeathKiss.com. One of the clues was a phone number written in the sky during last year’s San Diego Comic Con.

In the months leading up to its release, Dark Knight advertising got even more frantic. The Gotham News, a four-page newspaper set in Gotham City, was produced and mailed to various websites and magazines two months before the movie began.

Then, one week before the film release, the producers of the film pulled out all the stops. On Wednesday, July 10^th the “Citizens for Batman” group (a fake citizen action group that supports Batman) shined a huge bat signal on the Woolworth Building in New York City and the Sears Tower in Chicago.

Of course, another movie was promoting its way all the way to the box office: 3 million packages of Athenos Hummus, Pita Chips, Neo Classic Hummus and Feta Cheese varieties featured codes for free music downloads from the Mamma Mia movie soundtrack.

Well, clearly the two movies aren’t on the same level, but if we can take a guess and say that Mamma Mia appealed to older audiences, then it isn’t strange to assume that they don’t know how to use a computer.

Or, was the marketing itself tied to the films’ content?

You see, yours truly is uniquely suited to judge both of these films. On Friday night, after months of eager anticipation (like probably a lot of other 25 year old men), I went to see The Dark Knight. Then, unlike most men my age, I was dragged to Mamma Mia with my mother the next night.

Laugh it up. Ok, now to my point.

The Dark Knight was one of the most complex movies I have ever seen. It had so many plots and subplots going on that even after a lifetime of reading comics, I didn’t even know what was going to happen. Without giving too much away, I just have to say the film probably ends unexpectedly for most people. Walking out of the theatre, I was speechless. I wasn’t even sure what I thought about the film until a few days after I had processed everything.

Then, I went to see Mamma Mia. The basic plot is this: a girl, Sophie, grows up not knowing who her father is. So, she invites the three men who MIGHT be her father to her wedding to find out who it is. It never gets any more complicated than that.

So, the lesson I contrive from this is that if you have a complex movie, or product, market it with complex and challenging promotions; your audience will reward you for it. But, if you are marketing something Mamma Mia-level simple, throw your logo on a box of feta cheese and call it a day.

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