Why All The Content Marketing In The World Could Not Save Anchorman 2

Stay classy, content marketers.

When the rumors of an Anchorman sequel that had circulated for some time were verified, Ron Burgundy fans across the land could be heard celebrating and engaging in competitive quote-a-thons from the 2004 breakout hit.

Slated to be released in Dec 2013, the preceding four months of Anchorman 2: The Legend Of Ron Burgundy promotion saw fans bombarded with perhaps the most content-rich marketing campaign in movie history.

Anchorman 2 saw an unprecedented amount of content marketing by the film industry.

Far from the usual movie promotional fare of a couple of trailers and a few high-profile actor interviews on , Anchorman $50 million marketing was put to exceptionally good (perhaps too good?) use – particularly with its commitment to creating entertaining content.

Check out our article for The Guardian on content marketing in movie entertainment.

To be sure, all the old content marketing platform faithfuls were there.

Anchorman 2 had an official film Tumblr – which served as both a useful way for the brand team to serve original content and curate fan content and memes – and social publishing was also present and correct: Anchorman 2 came replete with a Facebook Page (3,452,153 ‘Likes’ and counting – although don’t count on Facebook being effective for content for much longer).

Yet extra efforts were made to extend the storytelling narrative of another Anchorman film by getting Ron Burgundy (and his onscreen cohorts) to move beyond perfunctory branded sites to start occupying other channels and platforms.

First came the various on-air, in-character appearances:

And lots of them!

As well as guest appearances on talk shows, Ron Burgundy appeared on various local news stations, opined on the Australian elections and sold cars in a cross-promotional campaign that lead to a 40% increase in Dodge sales.

Will Ferrell stays completely in character for reasons beyond storytelling and pure comedy — this is content marketing at its finest.People don’t like blatant advertising, so simply going out there and saying, “I’m playing Ron Burgundy in a movie again, you should totally go see it” won’t work. Instead, he has created all this entertaining content based around the character, designed to both make us laugh and indirectly remind us that there is in fact a movie coming out.

Next came the mobile apps such as ‘Scotch and Toss’ – which didn’t just harvest lines from the movie but required the actors to come in record new material. More original content.

This goes back to the classic content marketing maxim of not talking about the product (no mention of price, features and benefits – like a regular ad) but rather creating engaging experiences that sensitize people who will ultimately make a purchase (to understand more about adverts and content marketing, read this).

Most interestingly, all of this content – which was every bit as carefully-crafted and premium as the movie itself – was offered upfront. Compare this to the usual manner of marketing movies whereby content is offered afterwards; usually through secret brand portals, extra footage, purchase-based rewards, etc.

Moreover, Anchorman 2’s content marketing remains entertaining and searchable long-after the movie is no longer showing at cinema’s. And that’s the great thing about content marketing – each piece of content should be independently valuable, as well as when it is recognized as part of a larger product-centric whole.

The interesting thing is that – unlike episodic marketing campaigns that encourage and engagement spike and then trail off – all Ron Burgundy has to do is turn up in a new situation, that is appropriate for a ‘celebrated’ news anchor, and the brand storytelling continues…

So how did it fare?

Well, whilst Anchorman 2 was a masterclass in content marketing its initial box office takings were disappointing to say the least.

The LA Times records that opening weekend took a three-day weekend total of $26.8 million and was lower than the $28 million of the original, substantially so when considering the original’s inflation-adjusted number of $35 million.

And in fairness, a month later, takings have picked up - but why the initial underperformance?

Wesley Morris in Grantland goes even further:

“This kind of promotional campaign feels unprecedented for a comedy as lousy as Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. It’s a matter of inverse proportions. The commercials and television appearances aren’t quite advertising the movie. They are the movie.”

The Guardian also weighed in on Anchorman 2′s ‘total awareness’ campaign:

“Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues does not open until next week but some are crying enough already, saying Paramount’s publicity campaign has overexposed all things Burgundy, and asking “Would he please evaporate?”

Apart from marketing fatigue however, received wisdom and aggregate Metacritic scores reveal that, sadly, Anchorman 2 is just…not…that…good.

A timely reminder that all the content marketing in the world can’t save a dud product. Stay classy, content marketers.

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If you’d like to learn how to make sure your content marketing doesn’t flop but instead attracts and converts customers, get in touch to learn more about idio’s Content Intelligence.

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