Mastercard spoof, throwback trailer and the NSYE: How A24 used romcom nostalgia to market Materialists

On strategy, execution and audience expectation vs. reality

Hello dear readers,

Welcome back and happy Cannes Lions for those of you in attendance. For this week’s edition, I looked at the use of nostalgia to market A24’s Materialists, the strategy the studio employed and how audience expectation versus reality can be tricky to navigate.

Before we get into this week’s post, a few things about Cannes:

1. If you’re at the festival and you don’t make the time to go into the basement of the Palais to actually view the work being awarded, you’re missing out. Yes, the beaches, yachts and lavish dinners are where all the schmoozing happens but if you skip the opportunity to peruse the award-winning work all in one place and get inspired by it, that’s a shame.

2. Make a point to go to the Saatchi & Saatchi New Creators Showcase. (Wish it were still called the New Directors’ Showcase but that’s my gripe.) Every time I’ve gone, that’s been the best time I’ve had at the festival. The raw talent on display is rad as hell to see. Plus, it helps to have an hour out of the sun. And it’s useful! You could see a new director — er, creator — you want to work with and pitch that person to your clients.

Ok! That’s all. Now for this week’s post. It has absolutely nothing to do with Cannes. :)

Ads for Materialists at the New York Stock Exchange / Photo courtesy of A24

The cost of items – “Lip liner: $25, elite matchmaking services: $50,000, client wedding at the Plaza: $600,000” – punctuates a 60-second ad. It’s a familiar format and it ends exactly how you expect, “Priceless.” But no, it isn’t an ad for Mastercard. It’s the third trailer for A24’s new romance, Materialists, which opened in theaters this past Friday.

That the trailer spoofs the iconic Mastercard campaign (inspired by this version) is by design. The film digs into the value of a person, what they bring to the table and whether or not the “math” of a relationship adds up, as the lead character Lucy, a matchmaker, explains. It’s a clever way to market a movie that’s all about the economics of the dating market — until it isn’t, as the film moves beyond satire to a richer, deeper narrative on the importance of love.

Nostalgia as strategy

Spelling out that “math” by riffing on “Priceless” is just one of the ways that the independent studio is using nostalgia to market the film by Celine Song and starring Dakota Johnson, Chris Evans and Pedro Pascal. Last month, the studio rolled out another memorable format: The classic movie trailer with an omniscient narrator that Paste magazine dubbed the “the most ‘90s thing we’ve seen since the 1990s.”

The approach is meant to evoke nostalgia for seeing a big romance in the theater like The Notebook or Pride and Prejudice with the hope, obviously, of driving viewers who loved those movies back to the theater. When romance movies – be it of the romcom or more dramatic variety – are made today, they often go directly to streaming rather than getting a major theatrical release.

“They’re absolutely leveraging nostalgia as that emotional shortcut to that golden age of the romcom,” said Glenn Ginsburg, president of QYOU Media, a media and entertainment company that has run marketing campaigns for films like Paramount’s Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning and A Quiet Place: Day One. “It brings us back to a time when romcoms were at their best – and I think that’s going to have a really strong appeal to that older, millennial and Gen-X crowd that grew up and were part of that age.”

Using “nostalgia tropes of the time” makes sense to Daryl Giannantonio, chief strategy officer at VML, as a familiar structure like the trailer narration or the Mastercard spot can more easily draw in viewers and help them understand what to expect (more on this later). At the same time, “you’ve got to motivate people now to be like, ‘I want to see this so badly that I want to go to the theater and have that experience,” she said.

Ahead of the opening the film was tracking a $7-8 million opening, according to Deadline, which notes that it was made for roughly $20 million. It looks like the strategy worked as Materialists surpassed estimates making $12 million at the box office during its first weekend.

A stock exchange for New York men

The studio isn’t relying solely on familiarity and nostalgia to market the film. A24 is currently running a New York Stock Exchange-style ticker, hosted on MenofNY.com, that rates how valuable the men of New York are compared to each other. The data from the site appeared on screens at the New York Stock Exchange and on mobile billboards during the film’s premiere and last week appeared at spots like Wall Street, Central Park, Washington Square Park and Rockefeller Center.

“That seems like A24 at their best, to be honest, when they manage to speak in a [way to] culture that no other film studio is doing,” said Gonzalo Donoso, graphic designer at Mother Design, of the effort.

Aside from the stock exchange effort and nostalgia push, the studio also rolled out a Buzzfeed-style quiz on dating value. Meanwhile, A24 also partnered with brands like The Knot and Rent the Runway to try to reach their target demographic in areas outside of the traditional online and digital spots.

Going beyond the traditional promotional rollout is par for the course nowadays even for indie movies. The winner of this year’s Best Picture Oscar, Anora, reportedly spent three times its budget on its marketing with merch like thongs and t-shirts to generate buzz around the film. Materialists star Pascal donned a “Materialists Girl” shirt and posted such on Instagram. Said shirt is now on sale for $35. (Side note: The cottage industry of movie merch is vast nowadays.)

“Having exclusive merchandise for a particular IP or product [helps] – people want access, they want to show that they are on the inside,” said Ginsberg. “When someone creates something that’s special around their IP, something you can have and wear in real life” that can boost buzz.

Audience reaction

Marketing can only do so much. Once a movie is released, the word-of-mouth is really what matters. The reaction online to Materialists has been divisive. If you’ve been on TikTok you’ve probably seen (spoiler alert) about a dozen videos calling it “broke man propaganda” or complaints that the marketing made it seem like it would be a lighthearted romcom when the film isn’t that. Those complaints have their own response videos saying that the “broke man propaganda” camp didn’t get the movie (true) and that, given it’s A24, they weren’t expecting a traditional romcom.

Here’s the thing: The conversation is part of the point in making a piece of art and marketing that piece of art. And both of those things did their job well. You’re talking about the movie and its message. You’re talking about the marketing. The expectation versus the reality may not match — is this the movie marketing version of that expectation versus reality scene in 500 Days of Summer? — but that’s ok. I’d much rather have something deeper that gets me thinking about what the movie is trying to say than something that was exactly what I expected and I never thought about again.

My hope is that this film, the marketing, the response to the marketing and the film in general gets more studios to make more romance movies and put them back in the theater. We should all hope to get more stories about love and yearning and adults who’ve learned from their mistakes.