Deceptive marketing


The image for this movie (the one shown here on the site) is in my opinion a veritable example of how marketing should not be done.

It exudes the fear of not "selling" the movie from every pore, probably because of the latter's dark and gritty nature and heaviness on words.
They tried to put an inspiring picture of the sky with what looks like a common man walking the "thread of life", and adding the very deceptive caption of "a story for everyone who works for a living", which lures people (say, ordinary ones having common lives, working in offices etc) into thinking that they're going to relate somehow to the characters depicted in this movie. And this is blatantly false, as the only shared element here may be everyone's need for money on a recurrent basis, the rest being a story of some very unethical individuals trying to be masters of their unethical occupation.

The truly ironic fact is that this kind of operation is exactly the same which is seen in the movie itself... with the guys trying to sell estate at all costs, mainly using deception.

If I say that this is the worst kind of marketing (at least if abused) it's because people get deluded into thinking that the movie is going to be a much different thing than it really is, and are going to leave the cinema unsatisfied, regardless of the latter's quality.
What next happens is all too clear. If asked about the movie, they are going to spread bad publicity about it, as no divine cast or near-to-perfection performance can alter or counter the feeling which comes from unmet expectations.

And as a side note... as it is usually the case within certain European countries (such as mine, Italy), in addition to dubbing it the movie was also renamed "Americani" (Americans), in a clear attempt to remove another perceived element of "strangeness" or "unlikeability" (the odd title).

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Do you see the similarity between the promo poster and the actual screenplay? They are deceptive salesmen and the promo poster is deceptive as well. I think it's a great piece of cinema, most of the characters disgust me, I believe that is the intent, as well as was the promo poster, to invoke some anger and distrust.

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The promo poster strikes me as something that would be a play poster more than a movie poster, which this originally was.

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