Nic Cage’s creepy Longlegs; 5 lessons from the summer’s creepiest campaign!

Mid-June 2024.

A cryptic message, a full page of indecipherable symbols, appeared in The Seattle Times. A single, typewritten note provided the only clue: “Printed at the request of LONGLEGS.”

Billboard posters soon followed, featuring a partially obscured face gazing down at unsuspecting drivers. A stark, red phone number and a date were the only other details:

This enigmatic campaign was the work of indie film distributor Neon, promoting the horror film Longlegs. Despite its unconventional approach, the campaign was a resounding success, driving a remarkable $22 million in opening weekend box office sales in July.

I’ll argue that the campaign itself was more unsettling than Nicolas Cage’s portrayal of a deranged serial killer. 🙂

So, what made Neon’s campaign so effective?

Read ahead to know my thoughts…

Blast from the past

The Blair Witch Project paved the way for Longlegs. In 1999, Artisan Entertainment (now Lionsgate) launched a year-long multimedia campaign, including marking the actors as “missing, presumed dead” on IMDb.

This created a sense of reality, making audiences believe they were witnessing the actual footage of three vanished filmmakers.

Longlegs took this concept to a new level, inviting viewers to become active participants in the narrative rather than passive observers.

By creating a continuous journey filled with suspense and curiosity, the campaign kept audiences engaged and eager to uncover the mystery.

5 key takeaways from the summer’s creepiest campaign

• Build a continuous journey: Create a marketing campaign that unfolds over time, keeping your audience engaged and anticipating the next step.
• Embrace imagination: Unleash your creativity to craft immersive experiences that captivate your audience and spark curiosity. This strategy brought the target audience (horror fans like me!) into the movie in a way, and made its value more of a reality. It’s not difficult for us, B2B marketers from all backgrounds, to mimic this with the use of URLs and QR codes.
• Blend analog and digital: Combine traditional and digital marketing strategies to create a multi-dimensional campaign that reaches your audience on multiple platforms. I am sure you could imagine how it would’ve felt to hear Nic cage’s creepy voice if they called the phone number displayed on the billboard!
• Harness interactivity: Encourage audience participation by providing opportunities for engagement, such as puzzles, codes, or social media challenges. What made this campaign so effective is that people were given a lot to work with — ciphers to decode, numbers to call, backstories to explore — but none of it gave people what they really wanted: a face reveal. You could only get that by watching the movie, which made people eager to show up.
• Cultivate suspense: Plant breadcrumbs to pique curiosity and let your audience’s imagination do the rest. Neon lets its target audience fill in the rest with their imagination, which can be the most powerful tool in both horror and marketing.

What do you think?

Can we apply these tactics to our own (hopefully, less macabre) marketing endeavors? 🙂

Source

• https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nic-cages-creepy-longlegs-5-lessons-from-summers-abhilash-tsbic/

Storyteller