Pixar has been at the forefront of animation technology for years, dominating the box office and raking in millions of dollars in revenue.
And anytime they crank out another movie, there's no shortage of expertly-produced commercials, merchandising opportunities and big name partnerships. The bottom line is Pixar doesn't need to be clever about their advertising...if they want you to know about their movie, they have the money to make it happen.
Maybe that's why I was pleasantly surprised by Pixar's viral effort to build some buzz for their upcoming Toy Story 3 movie.
The technologically-advanced studio went old school by creating a vintage, 1980's-style commercial for one of the new characters that will debut in the movie, complete with cheesy lines and (intentionally) poor video quality.
The viral video makes no reference to Pixar or Toy Story 3, simply focusing on the Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear toy, resulting in a string of comments on YouTube on whether the commercial was legitimate or not.
Therein lies the true genius of this viral video campaign, because it created a dialogue on the Internet and around the blogosphere.
Of course, we shouldn't expect fake, 80's-inspired viral videos to become a staple of movie advertising in the future, but Pixar's Lots-o'-Huggin' Bear commercial was definitely one of the more clever buzz-generating efforts I've seen in a while.
