You’re Not Afraid of a Little Dark: Longlegs’ Unique Audience-Driven Marketing Campaign
NEON’s Brand & Campaign Background
On July 12th, 2024, film distribution and production company Neon Rated, more commonly known as NEON, released Osgood Perkins’ long-awaited horror thriller Longlegs. The film follows FBI Agent Lee Harker, played by Maika Monroe, as she hunts down the elusive and terrifying Longlegs, a satanic serial killer played by Nicolas Cage. The film quickly gained traction, premiering with NEON’s biggest opening weekend and grossing $22.4 million from 2,510 domestic theaters, marking it as NEON’s highest-grossing domestic film and ranking second in international highest-grossing to Bong Joon Ho’s smash hit Parasite, but also cementing the film as the most successful independent release of the year. By the time of the film’s release, NEON was already a household name. As an independent company with a focus on artistic, theatrical-first releases, NEON had held up constant assurance to its fanbase. Still, as Ari Aster’s A24-released horror films achieved massive financial and social success (less so with Beau is Afraid), NEON needed to elevate its approach to attract the same achievements. Luckily, writer/director Osgood Perkins was on the job.
“[NEON] really responded strongly to the movie, the raw materials of the movie really excited them, the way it looks, the way it feels, the way it sounds. They asked me early on, ‘Do we have your permission to kind of go nuts?’ And I said, ‘What else are we doing here? Go for it. Do your thing’”
A Mysterious Beginning
For the campaign, which took roughly 10 months to develop, NEON exhibited guerrilla marketing tactics, echoing 1999’s The Blair Witch Project’s marketing campaign, one of the most successful independent horror films of all time, which blurred the lines between real and fake in a uniquely powerful campaign. The big idea behind this campaign, as I will go more in-depth with soon, was to prioritize marketing restraint and let the overall uneasiness and mystery of the film lead the marketing. Having already built a loyal fan base over the years, NEON launched the campaign on its own YouTube channel, posting a series of clips over four weeks, all of which provided incredibly vague yet increasingly eerie glimpses into the film's murderous tone. In total, six of these teasers were released before an official trailer was made public.
Nearly immediately, audiences were hooked. Interestingly, none of the videos actually revealed much about what the film was about or anything that it pertained to. In the trailer, although more content is shown relative to the previous videos, no integral story plots are given, leaving much of the story still to be uncovered. What the trailer did reveal, however, is some sort of relationship between Lee Harker, the lead FBI Agent, and Longlegs, a terrifying figure that lurks in the shadows.
Symbols
At the end of all of the released videos, a strange set of symbols appears on the screen, changing with each video. These symbols provided the audience with something to engage with as they tried to decipher the mystery before the film’s official release. Fans took to platforms such as Reddit and Instagram to share their cipher solutions using a unique alphabet called the ‘Vigenere Cipher’. Using this method, fans of the film were able to decipher the strange symbols and turn them into messages, all of which displayed satanic praise.
Most notably, on June 14th, NEON posted a photo of The Seattle Times on the official Instagram, in which the marketing team had paid for a full-page advertisement showcasing more strange symbols in paragraph form. Once decoded, the newspaper revealed a lengthy message from Longlegs describing his desire to kill and his ongoing appraisal of the devil. Placing an ad in the newspaper was a deliberate choice by the marketing team to emulate the real-life Zodiac Killer’s iconic newspaper ciphers, thereby increasing the interest among dedicated horror fans for the film.
Try to decipher yourself!
(or cheat and look it up, I won’t tell)
The newspaper advertisement claimed to have been paid by thebirthdaymurders.net, which was revealed to be an in-universe ARG website detailing the many ‘birthday murders’ that had taken place in the setting of the film. The website featured much deeper background on the Longlegs lore, including the killer’s past murders, extensive information on each family affected, and also introduced his pattern of birthday-related events, a plot point later introduced in the film.
Strategic Physical Marketing
“If you buy a board on Sunset [Boulevard], it can cost you $250,000. If you buy a board on La Brea below Olympic, it costs $7,000. So we bought the $7,000 boards”
Longlegs’ physical marketing was particularly light, with only a few bus shelter ads and four billboards in Los Angeles promoting the film, focusing more on potential online virality than on establishing a strong overarching brand presence. Interestingly, the billboards revealed very little about the movie itself. None displayed the film’s title or any studio partnership. Instead, many showed other ciphers, including one with a phone number that cleverly incorporated ‘666’ in the center. This number, which was later reposted on Instagram, brings fans to a message from Longlegs himself singing ‘Happy Birthday’, further continuing the motif of birthdays (the original message has since been changed, find it out for yourself!).
One of four billboards. Call the number, if you dare!
😛
Withholding the Star
“We would never show you Nick Cage, you would have to pay to come see it. It was all built into that campaign day one”
The world’s scariest game of peekaboo
It should come as no surprise that Nick Cage remains one of the most recognizable stars of the film industry as he continues his 40-year-long acting career. Yet, despite this familiarity, his appearance had undergone a complete transformation for the film through makeup and prosthetics, turning him into a disfigured, horrifying creature (to limit spoilers, I won’t include a clear picture of the character, but feel free to look it up for yourself if you’re inclined; it’s an interesting look). The marketing team not only knew that everyone wanted to see what he would look like, but also that showing the villain would limit the mystery and horror holding the marketing up. In every piece of promotional material, including both digital and physical media, the team purposely withheld showing Nicolas Cage’s new appearance, instead only showing small bits and pieces for fans to tie together.
The Campaign’s Success
The Longlegs campaign had a relatively low marketing budget of less than $10 million. While common for horror movies, especially those from independent distributors, it is quite small compared to the larger studios’ budgets. For example, the first Five Nights at Freddy’s film had a $60 million marketing budget, four times the film’s production cost (worth it). Jordan Peele’s GetOut also had a large marketing budget of $30 million, compared to its $4.5 million production budget (also worth it). Still, in its opening weekend alone, the film more than doubled its marketing budget.
“From the jump, we said we need to respect the horror audience, the genre audience, because they’re largely underserved, I think, by distributors and studios. If we treat them with respect, if we talk to them on their terms and on their level and bring them along, they will invest in this film, carry this film and make it their own”
This campaign was built on trust. Writer/Director Osgood Perkins had been surrounded by the horror genre all his life. As the son of Anthony Perkins, the actor behind Psycho’s iconic Norman Bates, Osgood was well-versed in the community. By purposely withholding information from the audience, NEON effectively led a mob of passionate cinephiles like rats in a maze, giving them only breadcrumbs to fuel their journey.
Overall, the campaign was a major success. Despite the mixed reviews on the film itself after release, with a current 6.6/10 on IMDb, the box office opening weekend gross speaks for itself. While some higher-budget campaigns may rely on mass advertising to draw attention, such as the current Wicked: For Good campaign, NEON primarily utilized its platform to increase the mystery of the film, opting for a highly concentrated online presence. Rather than giving away plot points to increase excitement, as many trailers often do, NEON hid in the shadows to build suspense.
So why did the Longlegs campaign work so well? The answer is simple. NEON kept fans in the dark.
And when you’re all alone, you’re not just afraid of the dark… you’re scared of what may be lurking inside.
Ahhhh!!!!
