Search form

Fox Ramps Up Promotional Push for Garfield: The Movie

Twentieth Century Fox has lined up a host of national, regional, retail and in-theater promotional partners for the studio's GARFIELD feature. National promotional partners include Pepperidge Farm, Wendy's, Ashley Furniture, Valpak and Dole.

Pepperidge Farm will promote the live-action/animated film on packages of its Flavor Blasted Goldfish and Cheddar Goldfish crackers, and also will sell special Garfield-shaped crackers in Goldfish packages. The company's national promotion, whose tag line is "The Official Snack of Cool Cats," is Pepperidge Farm's first-ever tie-in with a motion picture. The program encompasses an on-pack promotion, in-store point-of-sale displays, Website features and a television campaign.

Wendy's is creating a National Kids Meal Program with five GARFIELD premium designs, national kid media support, point-of-purchase materials for both dining room and pick-up window as well as GARFIELD-themed Kids Meal Bags.

All 120 Ashley Home Store locations and many of the 5,000 nationwide Ashley independent retailers will participate in a campaign centered on "Garfield's favorite recliner." The campaign includes a national consumer sweepstakes, gift-with-purchase program and local spot TV and print advertising. Valpak will feature the GARFIELD: The Movie sweepstakes and Instant Win on specially designed envelopes to 48 million U.S. households from May 24 through June 18, 2004, and supported with tagged TV spots.

Dole Bananas will place special GARFIELD-themed stickers on 100 million bananas and hold a national sweepstakes and a POP program supported at retail.

Retail promotional partners include Meijer, Wal-Mart, Blockbuster, Cookies by Design and Pocket Billiards via the c-store channel. Fox's wide-reaching in-theatre promotional partners are Regal Theaters' kids' trays/zip packets themed to GARFIELD, the aforementioned Pepperidge Farm, Coca-Cola and gift cards promotions from Loews/Cineplex and AMC Theatres.

GARFIELD opens in theaters nationwide on June 11, 2004. The live action/CGI picture is adapted from the syndicated cartoon strip read in 2,600 newspapers by 260 million readers around the globe. Bill Murray stars as the voice of Garfield along with actors Breckin Meyer, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Stephen Tobolowsky. The film is directed by Peter Hewitt, produced by John Davis and written by Joel Cohen and Alec Sokolow.

Twentieth Century Fox is a unit of Fox Filmed Entertainment, a unit of Fox Entertainment Group.

Rick DeMott's picture

Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks