Movie-themed merchandise for the film adaptation of “Twilight” gets a promotional lift on website CafePress, which offers direct to consumer sales of tee-shirts, buttons, stationary, posters and the like.
Customers can select a surprisingly large number of Twilight-themed images that appear on various products, citing 6,000 products.
Separately, the soundtrack album for the “Twilight” movie topped the “Billboard” music charts its first week, indicating the cinema adaptation of the young-adult drama novel series is a hit. The soundtrack was #1 two weeks before the film premiered in theaters.
Only five other soundtracks have taken #1 in advance of theatrical start. They are “Private Parts” in 1997, “Murder Was The Case” in 1994, “That’s The Way Of The World” in 1975, “A Hard Day’s Night” in 1964 and – going way back — “Show Boat” h in 1951. Catching the public’s fancy before a movie lands in theaters indicates those movies were highly anticipated by moviegoers.
The music industry was in fat days in the 1980s and 1990s, when music album sales were at a peak, before digital media undercut sales of physical music recordings. “Marketing to Moviegoers: Second Edition” notes that the top selling soundtrack for 2007 was “Hairspray” with just 922,000 album units, versus 11.8 million units for all-time soundtrack sales record holder “The Bodyguard” in 1997.
“Twilight” is the third movie soundtrack to hit #1 so far this year with the others topping on a post-theatrical-premiere basis, following “Juno” and “Mamma Mia!,” according to an article by Paul Grein in ChartWatch. These other two landed in the top spot after their associated movies were in release. “This is the first year in which three movie soundtracks have gone all the way since 1998, when ‘Titanic’, ‘City Of Angels’ and ‘Armageddon’ all rang the bell,” notes the article.
Regarding fan-generated merchandise on CafePress, a press release: “The ‘Twilight’ Fan Portal on CafePress.com allows users to unleash their creativity and enthusiasm for the series to create expressive, colorful items related to the film–and then share in the revenue generated from sales of their masterpieces…Fans are already expressing their ‘Twilight’ devotion on CafePress with tributes to favorite characters, memorable quotes and witty plays on words.”
CafePress “offers sellers turnkey e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic,” the press release adds.
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