The #1 Problem with Movie Marketing in 2026

In this episode of the GaryVee Audio Experience, the team gives you an inside look on a team meeting where I discuss the current state of movie marketing and how major studios could utilize social media and clipping in their marketing to improve numbers at the box office. Let me know what you thought of this episode by tweeting me your thoughts @garyvee ❤️

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello.

• 0:00Speaker 01

  It's good.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  We can go into the movie marketing stuff. We have like information to give you and then maybe that sparks something.

• 0:08Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 0:09Speaker 02

  So I made, I did a whole bunch of research. I made a slide presentation I can show you. It has a lot of examples, a lot of, a lot, a lot, a lot of data. But I kind of wanted to hear what your, where your mind is at.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  So with that, before we get into that data, there is nothing more intuitive to me than movie marketing is one of the great disasters in our industry. In society and you look at Marty Supreme and that is an incredible execution of the reverse. They did so many different things which brought awareness. You know, obviously Timothy was already getting red hot, but there's, I'm sure the five of us would agree that Marty Supreme's marketing worked. Because we had some general awareness of what the hell is going on before it even kind of hit. Obviously, we'll talk about the horror movies in a minute and there's a lot to it.

• 1:02Speaker 00

  But I'm talking about Supergirl and I'm talking about the trillion other movies that come out a year that fail. And it's because they think TV commercials and, and billboards. I mean, He-Man would probably be a good one. Like I saw more outdoor media for He-Man. But like, cool, like I was aware, like I became aware that He-Man, the movie was coming. Because I saw outdoor media, which is good, but it was, you know, I got lucky that I looked up from my phone and saw like the billboard. Like they paid a lot of money for that.

• 1:40Speaker 00

  And if they just did clipping, the way Klavik and I and other, like there's, there's so many ways to do movie marketing better. Um, and they're just not modern and they're spending a lot of money in a short period of time. These companies are spending real money in a small window. To make an opening happen and I think they got it all wrong and movie marketing is doing what?

• 2:09Speaker 00

  What politics is doing wrong, right? You hear over and over incumbent does television.

• 2:17Speaker 00

  New age upset came from someone who did social media. And everyone's like, "What?" And like, that's what's happening here. Like, a modern experiential and social-first digital approach to movie marketing would transform the industry. And Hollywood is very Hollywood-out. They're very traditional. Hollywood is as traditional as corporations on Madison Avenue and as politics. And I'm passionate because I think it's really sad because I think there's some really quality movies that don't get discovered.

• 3:00Speaker 00

  And then there's, subjectively, some very average movies that would just do much better at the box office if people knew it existed or were intrigued to consider it.

• 3:12Speaker 00

  And so that's my overall thesis at the top of the article.