TV and Movie Marketing Campaigns That Escaped the Screen
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Author: Lucy Hunter, Social Media Executive at UMM
I bet you couldn’t tell me when Smile announced its release date, but you remember women grinning eerily behind home plate. As we’ve explored before with Marty Supreme, you might not be able to tell me the film’s plot, but there’s a good chance you’ve subconsciously formed a correlation between the colour orange and Timothée Chalamet.
@screenoffscript “Smile” is out in theaters this weekend 😁 #Smile #SmileMovie #Horror #Marketing #Cinema #Movies #Film ♬ original sound – Screen Off Script
Ultimately, a film or TV show’s biggest competitor isn’t another release. It’s indifference. Every year, thousands of movies and TV shows fight for attention. But there’s a reason for the separation between the unforgettable and the forgotten. The ones we remember don’t just exist on a screen; they invade timelines, conversations, memes, and headlines until seeing them feels almost inevitable.
Of course, there’s a fine line between unforgettable and infamous. If your campaign has people calling 911 instead of buying tickets, you’ve probably missed the mark. Just ask Mission: Impossible III, whose “This Message Will Self-Destruct in 3… 2… 1…” stunt ended with bomb squads, hospital evacuations, one very expensive PR headache, and a box office return that never quite justified the chaos.
@joeyengelman2 This disaster could not have been more on brand for the Mission: Impossible film series. #movies #movietok #moviemaking #filmmaking #movie #tomcruise ♬ original sound – Joey Engelman
Campaigns I Can’t Stop and Won’t Stop Thinking About
Not proud of it, but woman enough to admit it: years of doomscrolling have absolutely fried my attention span. If a movie or TV show hasn’t infiltrated my For You Page or the internet discourse, my brain quietly files it under “I’ll watch it later.” And because of this, I have missed, I’m sure, a plethora of content because I do, in fact, judge a book by its cover.
The campaigns that actually get me sat and still don’t just advertise a story, but give me something to sink my teeth into.
The Blair Witch Project proved this long before social media or influencers existed. Missing person posters appeared around Sundance, a website hosted fake police reports and evidence, and the cast disappeared from public view. Rather than telling people to watch a movie, the campaign invited them to investigate a mystery, helping the film gross $248 million worldwide.
It established a simple truth that still holds today in entertainment marketing: blur the line between reality and fiction, and the internet will happily fall down the rabbit hole.
A Universe Beats a Trailer | Obsession, 2026
I wish every time I craved McDonald’s, it rained and poured chicken nuggets.
Unfortunately, my wish didn’t come true. But for a while, Obsession almost convinced the internet that One Wish Willow could make that happen.
It all started with what looked like an innocent ad for One Wish Willow, complete with its own website and phone number. Then the rabbit hole got deeper. Fake influencers swore by it. Audiences were encouraged to text “Freaky Nicky”, only to be spammed with obsessive messages and creepy voicemails as though the film’s “villain” (Nikki = innocent) had somehow got hold of their number. Spotify playlists, Letterboxd accounts, billboards that slowly deteriorated over time, and interactive horror experiences made the campaign feel less like a movie rollout and more like an alternate reality.
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By the time the film hit cinemas, audiences hadn’t just seen the marketing; they’d lived inside its universe. Unlike so many campaigns that fall into the trap of astroturfing, Obsession never felt like it was manufacturing virality. Rather than trying to fool audiences, it invited them into the fiction, rewarding curiosity instead of demanding belief.
Because it dared to play psychological mind games with its audience, despite a small production budget of just US $750,000, Obsession went on to gross more than US $400 million worldwide.
Turning Commuters into Creators | Severence, 2025
Some fictional worlds are so rich, you almost wish they existed. Severance decided to drop us right into one.
Instead of reminding audiences that Season 2 was coming, Apple TV+ brought Lumon Industries into the real world. Inside New York’s Grand Central Terminal, the show’s iconic office space appeared, complete with Adam Scott and the cast silently working as their “innie” selves for hours.
@pizzagirllex This is some next level tv show promotion fr #severance #appletv #marketing #adamscott #brittlower #zachcherry ♬ Main Titles – Theodore Shapiro
What made this type of immersive marketing so brilliant wasn’t just the physical spectacle itself; it was how effectively it weaponised the smartphone lenses. Within minutes, everyday commuters transformed into an unpaid army of content creators. TikTok was filled with raw clips, Reddit exploded with fans zooming in on desk props for Season 2 lore, and X spiralled into fan theories.
Rather than a generic billboard, Apple TV+ built a physical engine to fuel the digital algorithm.
For a show about people who can’t leave work behind, Severance made sure the audience couldn’t either. By the time Season 2 arrived, we’d all been working overtime for Lumon.
Stop Gatekeeping Your Content | Leviticus, 2026
Once upon a time, movie studios spent millions on legal teams and takedowns, treating every fan edit like a copyright crime. Australian indie horror Leviticus flipped the entire IP paradigm on its head.
Leviticus built its foundation the classic way: a breakout Sundance premiere, rave reviews, and a high-stakes distributor bidding war. But director Adrian Chiarella knew that critical prestige and internet culture don’t have to live in separate silos.
So, instead of protecting every frame of the film with corporate watermarks, he open-sourced it, giving the audience the creative freedom to create queer fan edits.
Chiarella released an open folder packed with high-res B-roll, green-screen clips, titles, and audio stems, essentially telling the internet, “Go nuts.” Rather than forcing fans to screen-record blurry trailers, Leviticus fed the algorithm directly. Giving fans clean assets wasn’t just generous, it was tactical. It seeded CapCut templates, remixable sound bites, and edit trends straight into TikTok’s distribution engine, creating a wave of authentic user-generated content no paid campaign could ever replicate.
“They just have this incredible chemistry that’s impossible to fake. There’s so much going on behind their eyes when they look at each other.”
From director Adrian Chiarella’s eyes to yours, the official LEVITICUS scene pack. Edit your heart out: https://t.co/SxTk7FFMCj pic.twitter.com/oDeBwX3TOv
— Leviticus (@leviticusfilm) June 3, 2026
Platforms favour user remixes over polished studio ads every single time. By trusting modern fandom rather than policing it, the campaign turned passive viewers into active co-creators.
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Lightning Doesn’t Strike on Command | Barbenheimer, 2023
Have you heard of the screen world’s happiest accident? Of course you have. It literally has its own Wikipedia page.
Warner Bros. turned Barbie into a relentless pink phenomenon, while Universal positioned Oppenheimer as the dark, brooding prestige event of the year. Then the internet decided they belonged together. Mash-up memes, double-feature plans and custom outfits transformed two separate campaigns into one cultural moment.
@diianadoee peak times #barbie #summer #barbenheimer #openheimer #2023 ♬ original sound – kenz 💗🖤
Naturally, every studio executive wanted to know: “How do we brief the next Barbenheimer?”
The answer is you can’t. Barbenheimer worked because it was an unscripted collision of opposites—existential dread meets neon pink. The best entertainment marketing doesn’t dictate the joke; it builds a distinct world and trusts the internet to do the rest.
Will we get close this year with Dunesday? Only time will tell. But we’ve covered the Lisan al-Gaib enough for now.
What the Best Campaigns Have in Common
If these campaigns prove anything, it’s that audiences would rather willingly fall down a bizarre internet rabbit hole than be blatantly marketed to. Maybe we’re just stubborn. Or maybe we’re all a little too curious for our own good.
The fundamental shift in modern entertainment marketing comes down to a simple truth: the best campaign is no longer an ad for the content—it’s an invitation to play inside it.
Instead of begging for two minutes of our broken attention spans with a static sales pitch, the winning rollouts build an ecosystem. It’s a lesson we’ve had the chance to see up close through our partnership with Sony Pictures Television across Australia and New Zealand, helping to build awareness of more than 12 TV series across broadcast, AVOD, and SVOD, including The Good Doctor, Outlander, and Counterpart.
If you need help creating one, consider this your invitation to give us a call. We promise not to send you creepy voicemails… unless that’s the brief.
