26 BATMAN AND
THE BALL BOYS

In the summer of 1989, the UK launch of Tim Burton’s Batman movie was the big cinema news. Yet despite the multi-million pound marketing campaign, one of its most successful promotional activities cost little more than a few hundred pounds and a dash of creative thinking.

The film was scheduled for launch in late June; early summer in the UK and the time when the British traditionally get interested in tennis and eat lots of strawberries and cream – time for the Wimbledon tennis championship. The event has been covered by BBC TV for many years; a terrestrial state-run channel that doesn’t take any advertising. That being the case, it doesn’t present itself as the most obvious promotional opportunity. However, the marketing team for the film came up with a little wheeze that was to get around this minor problem.

They had a few hundred t-shirts printed with a large Batman logo across the chests. Then they stood outside the gates and offered a new t-shirt to everyone entering, on one small condition – they must put it on immediately.

Hundreds of tennis fans eagerly accepted their free gift and promptly donned their shirts.

TV coverage of the match went on as normal, with the camera moving from side to side as the ball flew over the net. But at the end of the rally when the camera turned to the crowds for a reaction shot, there were the mass ranks of people all wearing the Batman logo.

It was fantastic exposure worth literally hundreds of thousands of pounds but achieved at almost no cost.

And the moral is that sometimes you can out-think rather than out-spend your competition. Instead of wishing for a bigger budget, ask yourself what you would do if your advertising and promotion spend were cut in half.