It was reported earlier this month that Twentieth Century Fox is working on a movie based on the babies from the E*Trade commercials that have premiered during the Super Bowl over the past two years. The movie will most likely be terrible but studio heads still believe it could do surprisingly well at the box office. The plot supposedly involves the talking babies from the popular commercials trying to cross a playground. This isn’t the first time trade characters have made the leap from commercials to longer endeavors. A couple years ago they gave the Geico cavemen their own television show. As expected it didn’t last a full season but it demonstrated the ability for trade characters to have a screen presence for more than 90 seconds. While having your recognizable trade character star in a full length feature seems like a good way to increase brand exposure it also runs the highly probable risk of destroying the character. The E*Trade babies have been launched pretty successful commercials for the brand; people talk about them and they are often picked as favorites among the Super Bowl commercial premieres, effectively increasing the company’s brand equity. If/when this movie fails it will cast a negative shadow on the trade characters making them unpopular, irrelevant, and possibly unsuitable for further commercials. Also, the movie would be blatant rip off of the Look Who’s Talking movies, which were run into the ground in the early 90s with uninspired sequels. I believe that if E*Trade wanted to prolong the success of their “talking baby commercials” and keep their credibility intact, do not make this movie.
Video game developer Ubisoft just released an exciting new trailer for the newest release in the Tom Clancy series Ghost Recon, Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. Instead of showing game footage the new ad opted for live action with visuals and special effects that parallel a big budget movie. Using real actors playing out scenes as the game’s characters make the game’s world seem more realistic and move the focus on the storytelling rather than the actual game play. It also does an excellent job using special effects to showcase the game’s high tech gadgets and weaponry without taking away from the storyline. This ad is extremely effective because it is exciting, different, and gives the viewer a realistic, captivating glimpse into the world of the game. There have also been reports that this was merely a teaser and a longer twenty-minute trailer/short film will be released later this year.
Using movie quality, live-action sequences for game trailers is becoming increasingly popular after the groundbreaking ads released for Halo 3 by District 9 director Neil Blomkamp. Following this popular spot released in 2007, there have been successful live action trailers for last year’s Halo: ODST and Assassins Creed 2.
One could speculate that these types of ads are being released in hopes of building hype and gaining support for a full-length movie adaptation of the game. Movies based on video games are becoming increasingly popular (and better) with the upcoming release of Prince of Persia next month and the seemingly non-stop speculation of a Halo feature. Regardless of the reasoning, these cinema style commercials are very effective and hopefully become a long-standing trend in game advertising.
