The casts of the two “Mean Girls” movies pack a wallop in social media, which was leveraged for a theatrical premiere this past weekend.
The high-school satire musical opened Jan. 11-23 in cinemas to an estimated $28 million in domestic boxoffice (decent given horrible winter weather across the nation). The PG 13-rated film mixes in the cast of an identically titled movie from 2004, and the new version is more directly derived from the Broadway musical.
In an example of leveraging personal star power for the movie, co-star Angourie Rice of the new “Mean Girls” placed a video on her personal Instagram page of characters passing a note in class. It’s a marketing element playing off girls being snarky and a social clique in school.
Key copy lines for “Mean Girls” play into that theme with “You Still Can’t Sit With Us.” A more actionable message in film marketing materials says “Get In Loser. We’re Going to the Movies.” The “get in” suggests classmate chatter when driving a car around campus.
The new version stars Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp and Auli’i Cravalho. Talent from the 2004 original also seen in the new version are Tina Fey (also script writer), Lindsay Lohan and Tim Meadows.
In a survey of Instagram celebrity clout, Lindsay Lohan with 14 million followers topped the list (see accompanying table). The survey conducted by SocialBlade and commissioned by Replay Poker estimates that Lohan “can earn up to $64,100 for one sponsored post on Instagram, almost double the amount of any other ‘Mean Girls’ star.”
The estimated price of a talent’s Instagram post provides a benchmark to measure the marketing clout and benefits that their personal social media when it is focused to their movies.
In the table, “Engagement” is a percentage of likes and comments compared to an Instagram user’s following. A rate above 1% is considered good. Not ranked are talents Rachel McAdams, Tina Fey, Lizzy Caplan, and Jon Hamm, who are not currently active on Instagram.
In examples of talent leveraging their personal social media for the movie, “Analysis on PathSocial shows that two of Renée Rapp’s most popular Instagram posts involve promoting songs for the film ‘World Burn’ and ‘Not My Fault’, with 481,000 and 354,00 likes, respectively,” says a publicist. “Co-star Christopher Briney accumulated over 440,000 likes in just three days for his post about the ‘Mean Girls’ premiere, while #MeanGirls ranked as one of Auli’i Cravalho’s top-performing hashtags on the platform.”
The new movie was initially planned as a video streaming original for Paramount+. The new version did so well in audience test screenings that it was elevated to a theatrical film from Paramount Pictures, and was marketed with copyline “Only in Theaters.”
The new version of “Mean Girls” is peppered with musical elements, as with the Broadway play, and is what marketing executives call a transmedia adaptation. Transmedia plants a new, original storyline based on a source property in another medium. “Fans want fresh stories” says the third edition of academic/business book “Marketing to Moviegoers.”
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