A24 and Timothée Chalamet have engineered one of the most self-aware, creatively audacious rollouts of the year with Marty Supreme: a campaign built on satire, semi-chaos, and a willingness to blur the line between real promotion and performance art.
Rather than relying on standard press stops and junkets, Chalamet is embodying the character, mocking the marketing process itself, and turning the promotional machine into a piece of entertainment.
The result is a campaign that feels alive: part skit, part stunt, part cultural moment. It’s a rare example of a movie marketing push where the marketing becomes the content people want to watch and where the star’s persona becomes a core storytelling asset. Here’s how the strategy unfolds and why it’s working.
The Zoom call: The campaign’s central content piece
The now-viral 18-minute “internal A24 meeting” Zoom video is the heartbeat of the rollout. Framed as a marketing brainstorm gone off the rails, Chalamet riffs on absurd ideas (orange landmarks, blimps dropping ping-pong balls) fully leaning into a version of himself that is both hyper-specific and hilariously exaggerated.
What makes the Zoom skit powerful is how it reframes the promotion: instead of selling the movie, it sells the process of selling the movie. It invites audiences into the satire of the Hollywood machine while simultaneously building the world of Marty Supreme.
How the Zoom ideas jumped into real life
A24 didn’t let the skit stay fictional and that’s where the genius kicks in. The blimp Chalamet pitches? It’s real and flying in multiple U.S. cities. The corroded orange color he uses as a visual gag? It’s now the campaign’s official palette. Even Google joins the bit with an easter egg blimp animation tied to searches for Chalamet or the film.
This blending of parody and activation keeps audiences guessing what’s scripted and what’s happening IRL.
Becoming Marty: Chalamet’s persona shift
Chalamet is also undergoing a deliberate persona shift for this rollout, most visibly through the buzzcut reveal on Instagram Live. He pulls off a giant ping-pong-ball helmet before showing his shaved head…a moment that feels half performance art, half character transformation.
Across social platforms, he’s leaning into self-irony, tapping into a heightened sense of ego, chaos, and artsy satire that makes him feel both unpredictable and entirely on-brand for the film’s universe.
The pop-up store strategy
A24 amplified the aesthetic with an immersive SoHo pop-up… all ping-pong iconography, burnt-orange visuals, and streetwear-forward merch.
Chalamet showing up in pastel Dior and a branded bomber creates a bridge between high fashion and cult-movie merch, driving photos, discourse, and shareability.
The pop-up becomes a physical extension of the film’s kinetic, weird, orange world, not just a storefront.
Why the campaign works
A few strategic principles make the Marty Supreme rollout unusually effective:
Self-aware humor cuts through clutter. By parodying the industry, it becomes more relatable, especially to creative and marketing audiences.
The line between skit and activation is intentionally blurry. This unpredictability fuels social conversation and makes each new moment feel discoverable.
Chalamet’s persona becomes a character in the campaign. He’s not “promoting the movie”; he’s performing the promotion.
Movie marketing intel: This week in trends
GEN ALPHA 🧒 Hollywood Is reeling and PG movies have never been so popular (The Wall Street Journal)
Warner Bros. co-heads of theatrical marketing, Dana Nussbaum and Christian Davin, are reimagining tentpole campaigns with bold out-of-home activations, AI-driven audience targeting, and social-first strategies. Their approach turns every ad placement into a potential cultural moment, leveraging stadiums, gas-station screens, and experiential stunts to maximize awareness and engagement in a crowded marketplace.
BRAND PARTNERSHIPS 🪄 Which brand’s ‘Wicked: For Good’ campaign is the most ‘Oz‑some’? (PRWeek)
Universal leveraged partnerships with brands like Lush, Rice Krispies Treats, and LEGO to expand the reach of Wicked: For Good. Each collaboration tied directly into the film’s story and aesthetic: Lush launched themed bath products and a launch event, Rice Krispies Treats offered limited-edition packaging with prize giveaways, and LEGO released an Emerald City set with a behind-the-scenes video in LEGO form. Together, these activations created a multi-industry, immersive campaign that allowed fans to engage with the world of Oz beyond the theater.
Now You See Me: Now You Don’t — ★★½ (2.5/5)
A flashy, fast-moving heist thriller that delivers style over substance. The magic set pieces are fun, the cast is charismatic, and the pace rarely slows, but the twists feel more clever for their own sake than organically earned. An entertaining ride while it lasts, even if the logic doesn’t always hold together once the spell wears off.
