Ads for the big-screen become smaller

(US) As more and more young people visit the movies the marketing campaigns are understanding that traditional promtional campaigns need to get smaller to fit the digital screens. Their use of YouTube, iTunes and podcasting is a new approach to raising awareness of their movies.

Here’s a taster of some recent campaigns:

webcampaigns. Disney went to hot social network site MySpace.com to hype its July 7 Pirates of the Caribbean release. A MySpace member won a contest to be the first to view a new trailer and send it to friends among the site’s 74 million members.

For Poseidon, out last Friday, Warner Bros. teamed with Time Warner sibling AOL for a polling promotion that asked users how they would respond in the movie’s life-or-death situations.

Columbia Pictures’ publicity blitz for Friday’s release of The Da Vinci Code included the launch of online puzzles and riddles on Google.

Cellphone content. Mobile marketing for M:I:III, out May 5, included ring tones of the familiar theme song and wallpaper images of star Tom Cruise. But the promotions weren’t enough to bump attendance up to meet expectations. In its domestic opening weekend, M:I:III missed analysts’ predictions by about $10 million, taking in just $48 million, according to Exhibitor Relations. Some marketing experts, such as Sealey, say the shortfall was exacerbated by Cruise’s recent high-profile antics.

BlackBerry promotions. To publicize its April 28 release of RV— about an overworked executive — Columbia Pictures tapped into the ubiquitous business tool, the BlackBerry. It launched a downloadable game, RV Pile-Up, in which users navigate an animated RV through a series of obstacles.

Gaming systems. Paramount offers high-definition trailers for M:I:III and its upcoming Jack Black movie, Nacho Libre, on Xbox Live. Sony has made trailers for its films available for download and viewing on its PlayStation Portable (PSP).

Podcast material. Disney, which streams film clips on a variety of websites, makes all movie trailers compatible with the video iPod. For the June 9 release of Cars— the animated flick from new Disney unit Pixar — it launched 15 iPod videos. Disney also created individual iTunes music playlists that reflect characteristics of each of the movie’s vehicles.