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You don't like ads on this, a podcast about advertising. Listen. Ad free at the link in the description. A Better Help ad. Hold on one second. I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts? No notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with. BetterHelp therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Hi, everyone, this is Karine, the voice of Simon Fairchild from the Magnus archives. And today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile. Some things quietly drain you like an expensive phone bill, trapping your money month after month. Here's a quick money tip. Stop paying a carrier tax when you when you bring your own phone and switch to boost Mobile's $25 Unlimited Forever plan. You can unlock up to $600 in savings. That's money that belongs in your life, not trapped in a phone bill. Reclaim those savings for something you're actually into. An EMF meter, a thermal camera, or whatever strange corner of the universe you're currently exploring. Visit boostmobile.com to unlock your savings and take back control. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. Boost Mobile January 2026 survey comparing average annual payments Verizon and T mobile customers to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited plan. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy Fan Fellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fan Girls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball, but you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Stephen here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hey. Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chap. And along the way, we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. News flash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find Fantasy Fan fellows wherever you get your podcasts. This is an apostrophe podcast production. We're going to show you our big new Studebaker. Mama mia. That's a spicy meatball. What love doesn't conquer, Alka sells her will. What a relief. You're under the influence with Terry O'Reilly. The red carpet has been associated with movie premieres and the Oscars for a long time, but it predates the Oscars by at least 2,400 years, which also prompts the question, why red? Well, the history of the red carpet is interesting. Historians are not unanimous on its true origins, although many point to a Greek playwright who mentioned a red carpet in a play called Agamemnon dated 458 BC. In the play, the wife of the main character speaks of a floor of crimson broideries to spread for the king's path. Now, back then and through to the Byzantine Empire. In 1453, the royal color was purple. But the purple used at that time was said to be a reddish purple. In the Elizabethan period between 1558 and 1601, in 1803, the color purple was made officially regal by legislation. Laws determined what colors could be worn by different social classes. Over time, the color purple worn by royals became more and more red. In the 1700s, the French discovered how to dye various fabrics in a bright red hue. By the 19th century, red was the symbol of status. The color red was said to elicit attention as it was associated with danger, power, lust and aggression. Historians say the red carpet treatment was first referenced in newspapers. Between 1821 and 1861. European aristocrats landing in North America wished to maintain their status, thus demanded red carpets at events like weddings, balls and receptions. In 1922, Sid Grauman of Grauman's Chinese Theater in Hollywood was the first to use a red carpet for the film premiere of Robin Hood starring Douglas Fairbanks. The movie had cost $1 million, a staggering amount at that time. Interesting to note that Hollywood in the 1920s was seen as the epitome of decadence. Films were not seen as an art form, but rather a form of cheap entertainment for the masses. So the red carpet was used to give the premieres a much needed touch of class. While the first Oscars were held in 1929, it didn't become a public media event until 1944. But it wasn't until 1961 that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences chose to add a red carpet to its festivities. Two years later, that red carpet began to be filmed outside the venue, showing the stars arriving in their limousines. When the event was first broadcast in color in 1966, the public and Madison Avenue saw the power of the red carpet. Since then, the phrase red carpet treatment has become shorthand for first class treatment and status. While red carpet events are no longer just reserved for film stars, no red carpet is more famous than the one used in the world of motion pictures. While the red carpet still attracts movie stars to movie events, it's getting increasingly difficult to attract the general public to movie theaters. It all comes down to marketing. It's incredibly expensive to promote a new movie, and it's difficult to persuade people to actually get off the couch and visit their local cinema. But some recent movie marketing has employed surprising creativity, and some of those ideas have been bold. And one movie we'll talk about today was banned, and it was the best thing that ever happened to it. You're under the influence. When Marvel was getting ready to launch the movie Ant man starring Paul Rudd, it created a highly unusual pre promotion. As a rule, the movie industry tends to use outdoor billboards quite extensively to signal the upcoming release of a new film. Ant man is an unconventional hero, as he is a superhero the size of an ant. So the advertising campaign was designed to be equally unconventional. The idea was to use billboards, but unconventional billboards. Miniature billboards that were only 12 inches tall. These tiny billboards were perfect replicas of traditional billboards, which usually measure 10ft high by 22ft wide. Marvel Canada placed 2,500 tiny billboards in towns across Canada advertising the launch of Ant Man. The miniature boards standing at shin level were placed all over towns, on sidewalks, on top of mailboxes, and next to park benches. Marvel also had another idea. Why not put the world's smallest billboard up in Canada's smallest town? That title belongs to Tilt Cove in Newfoundland. Total population six. The six residents range in age from 60 to 90, and three of them sit on the town council. That one tiny billboard in Canada's tiniest town generated a lot of Ant man press. Well, all this creativity paid off. Ant man has made over a half billion dollars worldwide. Speaking of billboards, Netflix created a Spectacle to launch Extraction 2, starring Chris Hemsworth. In the adrenaline packed film, Hemsworth's character, Tyler Rake, embarks on a risky mission to save a family who has been imprisoned by a ruthless gangster. Hemsworth dangles from skyscrapers, narrowly misses a fiery helicopter, and fights his way through a long list of bad guys. All of which is to say, he perspires a lot. So Netflix constructed large billboards of the actor's face that literally dripped sweat. Here's how they did that. Lasers were used to cut tiny holes in Hemsworth's forehead to replicate pores. Then a water source was placed behind the billboard that pumped water through the holes at a pressure and frequency that mirrored the consistency of sweat. It was a first for billboards. Netflix wanted passersby to interact with the extraction 2 billboards, so instead of placing the boards over busy streets and highways, they were placed strategically on sidewalks. If they were further away, people wouldn't be able to see the beads of sweat. But at eye level, people were able to actually touch the sweating billboard and take selfies as planned. Those selfies were all posted to social media, where they went Viral, Netflix says Extraction 2 became the most viewed title of the week, watched by an estimated 42.8 million people during its first three days on the platform. The sequel also drove interest in the original Extraction film, which then became the second most watched film of that week. Clearly, the sweat equity paid off. The original Mean Girls movie hit screens in 2005. Written by Tina Fey, it has become a pop culture classic. Then in 2024, trailers for an updated version of Mean Girls were released. But it wasn't a remake or a sequel. This reboot was a musical based on the Broadway production of Mean Girls. But Paramount made an interesting decision. It did not market the movie as a musical. The studio decided to base most of the advertising on nostalgia and affection for the original movie by deliberately mirroring scenes and iconic lines without revealing the song and dance aspect. There were two audiences for Mean Girls in 2024 the audience that grew up with Mean Girls and the younger audience that didn't. First, the studio took the unusual step of releasing the original Mean girls movie on TikTok in 23 separate clips for one day only. That had never been done before. It was meant to grab the original audience to remind them why they loved the movie so much. Then the studio needed to attract a younger audience. So the trailer contained a line that said, this is not your mother's Mean Girls. Now, while that line attracted a younger audience, it had an interesting effect on the original audience. They hated it. It offended them. It made them feel old. Sensing the bad feedback, Paramount pivoted and changed the line to say, a new twist from Tina Fey that suggested the movie was still a Tina Fey project, but updated and new. That seemed to appeal to both audiences. But it was still a gamble not to say it was a musical. There is a hotly debated philosophy in Hollywood that most people hate musicals. But at the same time, I see that La La Land made more than $400 million, Rocketman made 113 million, and A Star is Born raked in 301 million bucks. So somebody somewhere likes musicals. Paramount's president of global marketing said that to launch by saying musical, musical, musical, you have the potential to turn off a large chunk of the audience. It was a tricky marketing problem, but it appeared the gamble paid off. The opening weekend was pretty good, earning $28 million at the box office. But something happened on week two. The box office took a nosedive, dropping close to 60%. The studio worried that when people discovered it was really a musical, it led to lukewarm word of mouth. One of the most shared videos on TikTok showed an audience groaning en masse when one of the characters breaks into yet another song. But in spite of or because of that tricky marketing, Mean Girls, the musical did end up with a pretty decent box Office, cracking the $100 million mark, earning $104 million worldwide as of this writing. When we come back, a movie star goes way above and beyond to promote his new movie. If you're enjoying this episode, you might also Also Like Red Carpet the Business of award shows season 10, episode 13 where we tell the story of Sandra Bullock receiving the Golden Raspberry Award for the worst performance of the year. Then she wins an Oscar the following night. You'll find the episode on your favorite podcast. Apparently before we had AT and T Business Wireless Coverage, our delivery GPS wasn't the most reliable. Once our driver had to do a 14 point turn to get back on route. A 14 point turn. An influencer even livestream the whole thing. Not good for business. Now with AT&T business Wireless, routes are updating on the fly and deliveries are on time. And the influencer did get us 53 new followers though at&t business Wireless Connecting changes everything. A better Help ad. Hold on one second. I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts? No notifications, no expectations, just space to talk. With better help Therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Howdy, howdy ho, and welcome to Fantasy fanfellas. I'm Hayden, producer of the Fantasy Fangirls podcast and your resident lover of all things Sanderson. And I'm Stephen, your bookish Internet goofball. But you can call me the Smash Daddy. And we are currently deep diving Brandon Sanderson's fantasy epic Mistborn. But here's the catch. Steven here has not read Mistborn before. That's right. Hey. Hey. So each week you'll get my unfiltered raw reactions to every single chapter. And along the way we'll do character deep dives, magic explainers, and Steven will even Try to guess what's next. Spoiler alert. He'll be wrong. Newsflash. I'm never wrong. Episodes come out every Wednesday, and you can find fantasy fanfellas wherever you get your podcasts. One thing that doesn't happen often enough is when the star of a movie goes all out to promote their film. And by that, I mean doing more than the usual press tour or talk show appearances. Take the movie Marty Supreme. It's about a man named Marty Mauser who will do anything to become the world's best ping pong player. The movie is set in the 1950s. At one point in the film, Marty Mauser, played by Timothee Chalamet, introduces orange ping pong balls as a way to brand himself and to disrupt the traditional white balls used in table tennis. That color would become a key marketing tactic. One of the first marketing elements that appeared for Marty supreme was an 18 minute video of a zoom meeting that was leaked to social media. It was an interesting thing to witness, as most people never see the internal meetings behind movie marketing. This zoom meeting was between Timothee Chalamet and the studio marketing team. After everyone has introduced themselves, Chalamet takes control of the meeting by outlining what he wants to achieve. Yeah, I just wanted to, like, make sure that we're all, like I said, aligned, because I'm so excited. Like. Like, when I wake up every morning, I think culmination, integration, like all of us. And fruition. Fruitionizing, which is not a word, obviously, but fruitionizing the release of this movie. Like, really making sure it comes out in a great way. I'm thinking big. You know what I mean? This has got to be, like, one of the most important things that happens on planet Earth. This year, Chalamet begins rolling out his ideas to promote the movie. Like being on the COVID of Wheaties cereal boxes. I think I should be on thousands of Wheatie boxes. To me, it's Marketing 101. Then Chalamet tells the team they should leverage the color orange. If you think symbol of American greatness, what do you think of bald eagle? The flag? Flag. American flag. Yeah. Orange bald eagle. No, the Statue of Liberty. Oh. Chalamet wants the Statue of Liberty to somehow be painted orange. The marketing team is not sure what to say. And then you see the Statue of Liberty and it represents everything. It's always represented. But if it's orange, now you're thinking Marty Supreme. Yeah. Then Chalamet inexplicably thinks the Eiffel Tower in the Taj Mahal could also Be painted orange. Next, Chalamet wants to paint a blimp orange with the words Marty supreme on one side and dream big on the other. We should have the blimp go above Flognall and rain ping pong balls. Marty supreme branded rain ping pong balls on everyone. I love that idea. Yeah, I do too. I think one thing we'll have to kind of take into consideration is just the safety hazard. Exactly. Something we'll think about. Someone wonders if the blimp might remind people of the Hindenburg crash. The longer you watch this Zoom meeting, the funnier it gets. A movie star unhinged with unworkable ideas and the marketing team caught between sucking up to him and trying to bring reality into the meeting. If it's the difference between, you know what I mean, someone losing an arm putting out the movie, but someone gaining an arm intellectually when they see it, I'm a fan of the latter. Then the meeting comes to a close. Before we all jumped off like. Cause it was like really just my ideas, Ollie, like, take them or leave it and do what you want with it. It's just like, you know, I've obviously like broken records as like, you know, young lead of movies recently, but, but you know, you do what you. You pass us the ball, we're gonna, we're gonna. Thanks for sharing. We're definitely gonna create a new vision at that point. Chalamet asks everyone to do a 60 second meditation before signing off, then insists that everyone sign NDAs. Hilarious. I can't tell you how hard I laughed watching this video. As it turned out, that entire Zoom meeting was written and directed by Chalamet. It was a completely satirical scripted video and played to straight perfection with hesitant, nervous underlings and a lot of bad fruitionizing corporate jargon. It was all a marketing stunt and it became a viral sensation. Chalamet and the studio did in fact get a giant orange blimp to fly around the country. He did appear on a limited edition box of Wheaties. And there was Chalamet designed limited edition orange merch available. Then in a big stunt, Chalamet became the very first person to actually stand at the top of the giant sphere in Las Vegas as the sphere turned into a giant orange ping pong ball. Marty supreme is an American film that comes out on Christmas Day 2025. When you think about it, Marty supreme is an indie period piece about a guy playing ping pong. How do you sell that? It needs big hype. And Chalamet was all in on promoting the film every one of the stunts went viral and, by the way, were less expensive to produce than a traditional marketing campaign. Marty supreme became the biggest opening day ever for A24, the indie studio behind the film. It is also the third biggest Christmas Day opening of all time for an R rated movie. As of this writing, Marty supreme has cracked the $100 million mark and projections suggest it will probably gross $180 million worldwide. When we come back, a movie is banned and it's a marketing godsend. A Better Help ad Hold on one second, I just need to. What if you had a room where no one interrupts, no notifications, no expectations, just space to talk with? BetterHelp therapy happens in a space that's yours. Visit betterhelp.com randompodcast for 10% off your first month of online therapy. Every idea starts with a problem. Warby Parker's was simple. Glasses are too expensive. So they set out to change that. By designing glasses in house and selling directly to customers, they're able to offer prescription eyewear that's expertly crafted and unexpectedly affordable. Warby Parker glasses are made from premium materials like impact resistant polycarbonate and custom acetate, and they start at just $95, including prescription lenses. Get glasses made from the good stuff. Stop by a Warby Parker store near you. Most all in one HR systems are a patchwork of disconnected and manual tools. Rippling is totally automated. If you promote an employee, Rippling can automatically handle necessary updates from payroll taxes and provisioning new app permissions to assigning required manager training. That's why Rippling is the 1 rated human capital management suite on G2, TrustRadius and Gartner. If you're ready to run the backbone of your business on one unified platform, head to rippling.com acastbiz and sign up today. That's R-I-P-P-L-I-N-.com acastbiz to sign up. One of my favorite movie marketing stories is for Monty Python's Life of Brian. As you may know, the cheeky 1979 movie is about a man named Brian who is born on the same day in a stable next door to Jesus Christ, Brian of Nazareth, then spends his life being mistaken for the Messiah with hilarious results. EMI was bankrolling the picture originally, but when Chairman Bernard Delfont finally got around to reading the script, he was shocked and horrified. He said his company would never fund such a blasphemous atrocity. Python director Terry Jones and his cast and crew were about to travel to Tunisia to Begin filming two days later. The Pythons thought they were dead in the water. They desperately started searching for new investors, but were rejected by every movie studio they approached. Finally, one American studio offered to put up half the $4 million budget. But the Pythons couldn't make a movie with only half the money. Eric Idle was a good friend of Beatle George Harrison. He told Harrison the Pythons were in danger of losing the film. George Harrison was a big fan of Monty Python. He loved the TV series and he really loved the movie Monty Python and the Holy Grail. As a matter of fact, Idol had met George at the premiere of that movie in 1975. So when Idol told Harrison they were urgently looking for a studio to finance the movie, George said, I'll take care of it. Idol said, what do you mean? George said, I'll handle it. Idol said, you don't understand. We need $4 million. George replied, saying, leave it with me. To rescue the movie, George Harrison created a company called Handmade Films with the sole purpose of financing Life of Brian. Harrison then mortgaged his Friar park home in order to raise the $4 million. And that's how Life of Brian got made. Handmade Films would go on to become an important force in British cinema and produced enough good films to merit its own celebratory film festival called the Other Handmaid's Tale Film Festival. Eric Idle said George Harrison financed Life of Brian for one simple reason. He just wanted to see it. As Idle said, it's still the most anyone's ever paid for a cinema ticket. Then the movie got even luckier. It got banned almost instantly. Life of Brian was condemned by religious groups. The Catholic Archdiocese of New York called the film a blasphemy, adding that it was a crime against religion. The Catholic Film Monitoring Office said it was a sin to even see the film. Three distinguished Jewish organizations representing 1,000 rabbis condemned the film, describing it as a vicious attack on Judaism and the Bible. The Lutheran Council described it as a profane parody. Many towns in the Bible Belt of America refused to screen the movie. Life of Brian was banned in Norway for an entire year. It was banned in Ireland for eight years. It was banned in Italy for a decade. In the uk, a number of local councils banned it, including some that didn't even have a cinema. But all the condemnations and bans were the best thing that ever happened to Life of Brian. The more people protested, the more tickets it sold. In Sweden, it was advertised as so funny, it was banned in Norway. It became the most successful British movie of the year in North America, people picketed outside New York movie theaters with placards that said the group's name gave away their diabolical intentions that Python equals Serpent equals Satan. Yet in its first four day screening at Cinema One in New York, one of the city's biggest theaters, Life of Brian recorded record box office receipts. A New York Times critic called it delirious offensiveness. The movie had been due to open on 200 screens across the US, but after various religious groups protested against it, the number of screens was tripled. On BBC tv, Pythons John Cleese and Michael Palin debated the Bishop of Southwark, a pillar of the Christian establishment. The Bishop rolled his eyes, calling Life of Bryan a 10th rate film that only spurred more ticket sales. Life of Brian would become the UK's fourth highest grossing film of 1979. Some call it the funniest British comedy of all time. Maybe John Cleese summed it up best when he said all the protests and all the bans actually made him a rich man. Marketing movies isn't easy anymore. During the pandemic, audiences learned to stay home and stream instead of heading to theaters. Domestic box office last year was still 24% below pre pandemic levels. So it takes incredible effort and fruitionizing to get people up off the couch and out to movie theaters. And remember, movie marketing has to fight with all the other marketing out there just to get noticed. That's why Ant man dared to use tiny billboards to get big attention and why a sweating billboard stopped people in their tracks. And it's why actor Timothee Chalamet went above and beyond the call to promote Marty supreme by standing on the top of the Las Vegas sphere. It's also interesting to note that all the stunts mentioned today cost only a fraction of what a traditional advertising campaign would cost. And all those stunts were shared around the world on social media. It takes a lot of money to make a movie these days, and it takes a Herculean effort to market it. And if you're really, really lucky, your film might just get banned when you're under the influence. I'm Terry O'Reilly. This episode was recorded in the Tear Stream Mobile recording studio. Producer Debbie O'Reilly Chief Sound Engineer Jeff Devine Research Patrick James Aslan Theme music by Casey Pick, Jeremiah Pick and James Ayton Tunes provided by APM Music Follow me Terry Oinfluence this podcast is powered by Acast, Terry's top slogans of all time. Number 14 Harvey's makes your hamburger a beautiful thing. See you next week. 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