Why Deadpool’s Social Media Marketing Was Better Than The Movie
Deadpool has murdered its box office opening weekend, earning $135 million, smashing the record for the most successful R-rated opening of all time and the biggest launch in February in Fox’s film history, quite a coup for a movie that only cost $58 million to make, right?
All types of questions might be running through your head at this point, like, how did they do this? And was the film even any good? Well…
Lets just say, we were so impressed with their marketing communication efforts on social media and integrated offline, that the film was never going to live up to the expectations it had built itself up to.
Controversial guerilla marketing is often frowned upon in regards to promoting movies, due to the risk involved with associating a bad image to a movie before people have already seen it.
However, Fox made the successful decision to launch the movie on Valentine’s weekend (????) and although the movie was anything but a romantic movie to watch with your partner, the marketing communications made sure to mock the hell of out Valentine’s weekend, and oh boy did they succeed.
Take a look at a few of their tweets, my personal favourite below, “True Love Never Dies”, oh the irony ????.
This Valentine’s Day, fall in love with #Deadpool. pic.twitter.com/ScQWrpXXmx
— Deadpool Movie (@deadpoolmovie) January 11, 2016
It’s time to cuddle the shit out of #Deadpool. In theaters now. https://t.co/uBUGirtH3T pic.twitter.com/kLzUAj3tu6 — Deadpool Movie (@deadpoolmovie) February 14, 2016
Premature ammunition. pic.twitter.com/fcv9dXPoFD — Deadpool Movie (@deadpoolmovie) February 16, 2016
A creative marketing campaign that piledrived through social media like Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson on pancake day, with 74% of positive comments on social media compared to 26% negative – between 1st January – 9th February, according to Brandwatch. However, what was hugely impressive, was Fox’s marketing teams ability to successfully integrate the social campaign offline, by using emojis on a billboard to promote the movie. ????????L. 
Fair play to Fox’s marketing team, we take our hats off to you, here’s a selfie of the creative team behind this magnificent campaign with Deadpool himself (Ryan Reynolds). 
By Chris Kyriacou @MrChrisKyriacou Join the conversation #TheFutureOfMarketing.