Paramount's 'An Inconvenient Truth' Marketing Taps Current Events

With the brutal heat wave making headlines across the country, the marketing team behind ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ have spun current events into a creative series of advertisements, according to the “Marketplace Report” broadcast yesterday on American Public Media:

Global warming might seem like counter-intuitive programming for folks trying to escape the heat, but the new ad campaign for the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" has used the toasty weather to its advantage.

Newspaper ads for the film now list scorching temperatures in several US cities.

"It's kind of unusual in the 7th, 8th week of release to have fresh ad campaigns going out to keep a film in the public eye. I think it's been pretty effective."

The film has grossed just under $19 million through July 24th (very impressive for such a "didactic" documentary), and the platform release up to the current peak of 560+ theaters has been handled exceptionally well by the Paramount team. Keeping a film"fresh" during a long roll-out is one of the biggest challenges in film marketing, and tying into current events on both the publicity and advertising fronts is a smart approach to achieve that end.

The film is likely on track to gross in the $20-22 million dollar range, and has a good chance of usurping ‘Bowling for Columbine’ for the number three spot on the list of top-grossing documentaries of all time (‘Fahrenheit 9/11’ holds the top spot at $119 million, and ‘March of the Penguins’ is at #2 with $77.4 million).