MySpace Movie Marketing

Over this past weekend I was watching TV when a commercial for the new movie John Tucker Must Die came on. The movie itself does not look like the sort of thing that I would spend my time or money on; I guess I am not in that teen demographic anymore. What did intrigue me about this trailer was the website they direct people to at the end.

It isn’t the usual web address with a domain specific the movie name, nor is it part of the main Fox Movies domain. The only web address displayed is a MySpace profile page for the main character of the film, John Tucker.

With the target demographic being teenagers, there is probably no better space for them to be than MySpace. Users can ad John Tucker to their list of friends and help spread the word by sharing the movie with the rest of their MySpace “friends”. They can talk back and forth about the movie with other MySpacers; I even noticed that some of “John Tucker’s friends” are other characters from the movie. The dialog between users includes comments by these characters showing that Fox didn’t just create a profile and dump it on MySpace; they are actively marketing in this space.

Since it is a Twentieth Century Fox movie – which is owned by News Corp – which purchased MySpace last summer; this connection is not that far of a stretch. Even though, I was intrigued that this MySpace profile was not in addition to another website, but was placed as the official site of the movie.

The questions this raises for me are what does this say about the plans for MySpace advertising and branding and will other movie studios follow suit?