#4 Advertising Analysis

Super Bowl LII (52 (I didn't know that)) brought many great advertisements during the "big game," but none were as interesting as that of the film The Cloverfield Paradox.

The Cloverfield Paradox is the third film in the 'Cloverfield' franchise. These series of movies have been known to have an interesting marketing strategy, but many agree that the one for 'Paradox' was the most risky/cool. 

The original Cloverfield film kickstarted the unique marketing by flashing its trailer in front of 2007's Transformers. The trailer was vague, not even introducing a title, just the release date 1-18-08. From there, if someone looked up the release date they would be sucked into a wormhole of various websites alluding to a company's illegal plotting's that lead to the capsizing of an oil tanker that awakens a monster under the sea that wreaks havoc on New York.


The viral marketing for the film was intoxicating. The main characters of the film all had their own MySpace webpages, one of the characters works for the company mentioned previous, the company has many subsections that also deal with the monster. The marketing didn't necessarily do anything to affect the film, but it packaged more around the film as supplementary content that audiences could look into or not. 


After the success of Cloverfield back in 2008, fans were clamoring for a sequel. It wasn't until almost 10 years later when, on January 15, 2016 Bad Robot dropped the trailer what seemingly was a sequel titled 10 Cloverfield Lane. The film looked different from the original and how it was connected was a mystery, but the fact that the cries for a sequel were answered was satisfying enough. Even more satisfying is that the trailer announced the release date of the film which was less than 2 months away 
from the time the trailer dropped. (for those who don't know, a film tends to release a trailer many more months in advance.) The film also had an interactive viral marketing campaign. 

Now to 'Paradox.' It was after 10 Cloverfield Lane that the fans finally thought they were up to Bad Robot's game. 10 Cloverfield Lane was originally a film titled 'The Cellar' that was retitled and slightly retooled as a Cloverfield sequel. Fans looked at the films in Bad Robot's slate and figured a film called The God Particle had the makings of a Cloverfield film. The film was mostly done, small, had a high concept sci-fi logline, extremely secret, and produced by J.J. Abrams. For about 4 months, fans were wondering when the film would be released, for no viral marketing had started and it seemed about due for this movie to have a trailer coming out or SOMETHING. 

Finally, after long silence, news had been kicking around that the film might move to Netflix for an April release. Not long after that the Tagruato website (the company related to the monster in Cloverfield) had some activity detailing a space flight they were funding. 

Then, out of nowhere, on the Super Bowl, the first trailer for the, now titled, Cloverfield Paradox debuted and was going to be released on Netflix right after the game. Keep in mind that "God Particle" was known as placeholder title meaning that they released the title, the trailer, AND the film all on the same day with it's marketing strategy spanning only a few hours as opposed to a few months or even years. 


The film, over all, was just okay if not a smidgen confusing, but it was exciting to see what it sets up for the future of the Cloverfield franchise. Cloverfield 4 is being speculated to be a film called Overlord, a film set in World War II where the Nazi's have supernatural means on their side. The film is meant to be released in October 2018 and the title is expected to be changed to [Insert Cloverfield Something].