A Passion For Cross-Marketing
by Jason at 6:30 am on August 25th, 2004 in Entertainment
Back when Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ was in the planning stages, nervous Hollywood types decided to park themselves on the sidelines. The film then went on to gross more than $370 million in ticket sales as an independent release. Whoops!
Don’t think for a second that the same mistake will be made twice. Twentieth Century Fox, one of the studios that famously whiffed on the theatrical release of Passion, is going all-out in order to cash in on VHS and DVD sales�a potential profit that is making Hollywood executives moan “oh god!” in a manner not heard since the Heidi Fleiss era. In addition to the typical storefront and online sales channels, Fox is in the midst of what has been called the largest Christian marketing effort ever, or at least since the Inquisition (which, again, no one expected). Six million Christian households, at the rate of 50,000 a day, have found themselves on the receiving end of Fox’s e-mail promotions. Churches�26,000 of them�have been contacted about buying bulk orders of the film for their parishioners. The bulk orders come in lots of 50, which still isn’t enough for some people; one pious individual has already placed an order for 100,000 copies of the movie. Seriously.
But as the late-night tv commercials say, “Wait, there’s more!”. To promote the film at churches, Fox gave out 10,000 lithographs depicting religious imagery such as Jesus, the cross, and perhaps Gibson’s naked ass from the first Lethal Weapon movie. In addition, churches and bulk orders were offered a chance to buy (at extra cost, of course) custom slipcovers for the DVD, each imprinted with the congregation’s name or a short message.
As you might guess, we loves us some custom slipcovers. Even though we aren’t technically a church, and our congregation is mostly made up of jaded bloggers and bitter political junkies, we can’t let this opportunity pass by.
We humbly ask you to make our dream a reality. Because there certainly isn’t any custom slipcover action on bulk orders of Honey or Belly. Amen!
passionofthechrist (at) 1115.org. You know you want to.
Ellogoods wrote:
you wrote: “Fox is in the midst of what has been called the largest Christian marketing effort ever, or at least since the Inquisition…”
Bravo! That is a funny line and it made me smile but the funniest thing to me besides Mel telling boldface lies about how his film was true to the gospel, (no, it was not), is that heaps of violence SOLD this movie to the public. I don’t think there has been such a Religious gore fest since the Exorcist. Thankfully, The Passion is preaching to the choir, and yes, I am disturbed that the choir has eaten up this dumbed down version of the gospels along with it’s fair amount of anti-semitism sprinkled in but then the secular populous does the same thing.
I have never been so happy to be an agnostic / part time atheist.
Posted 25 Aug 2004 at 8:08 am ¶
Mitch wrote:
The greatest line in this story:
“…Fox is in the midst of what has been called the largest Christian marketing effort ever, or at least since the Inquisition (which, again, no one expected).”
A close second:
“To promote the film at churches, Fox gave out 10,000 lithographs depicting religious imagery such as Jesus, the cross, and perhaps Gibson’s naked ass from the first Lethal Weapon movie.”
Good stuff guys.
Posted 25 Aug 2004 at 11:02 am ¶