Ant Man’s Marketing

Marvel is currently a titan in the movie industry, only having the Avengers dethroned as the biggest opening by the new Jurassic World film. The Marvel marketing team continues to deliver eye catching content that gets everyone excited about the upcoming films. Recently here in Los Angeles, we’ve noticed the new Ant Man posters and they seem to be somewhat odd.

Now as people that are not huge followers of comic books, we are unsure if Ant-Man actually becomes an Avenger at some point which is why he might be featured with them on these posters.  Our lack of knowledge in that regard makes us in the statistical majority of Marvel movie goers, people that don’t read the comics. But this got us thinking.

Ant-Man has been subjected to several delays in its production, with one writer even leaving due to creative differences. Could this marketing been an indicator of these behind the scenes woes? Are these posters indicative of a movie that may be considered bad that cannot be sold on its own merits?

Let’s examine this a bit. These three posters are all the posters we could find online that position Ant-Man standing on something related to an Avenger. Interestingly, the marketing chooses only the three most popular Avengers for this campaign. There is no version with the Hulk, Black Widow or Hawkeye, perhaps because they are not as recognizable or because the team felt that they did not have as much cache. Initially we thought that maybe those three were selected to fit the same copy, but as you can see with Iron Man, the copy changes.

As a marketing agency we love the snarky, tongue in cheek copy but in the end are left wondering; is the marketing team simply trying to use the Avenger’s popularity to hedge their bets on a bad movie, or is this a deliberate move in the realm of world building for the entire franchise?