Marketing Strategies of Anchorman 2 and Beyoncé's Surprise Album: A Comparative Analysis, Schemes and Mind Maps of Marketing

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Journal of the

Music & Entertainment Industry

Educators Association

Volume 14, Number 1

Bruce Ronkin, Editor

Northeastern University

Published with Support from

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Get Classy: Comparing the Massive Marketing of Anchorman 2 to the Non-marketing of Beyoncé’s Beyoncé Album

David Philp

William Paterson University

Abstract

In the fourth quarter of 2013 two entertainment industry blockbust- ers were released: the film Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and a release by recording artist Beyoncé Knowles titled Beyoncé. While the Anchorman 2 team spent months promoting the December 18 release by traditional (and some very non-traditional) means, the Beyoncé album was cloaked in secrecy until it was issued by surprise on December 13. These two completely different strategies both proved successful, as the film sold US$122 million in tickets within its first month of release and Beyoncé sold 1.4 million albums during this time. This paper describes the mar- keting tactics used by both camps and the market and critical reactions to those tactics, and shows how sales success is not dependent upon one single strategy but rather upon a strategy that works best for a particular release at a particular time, both on the calendar and during an artist’s career. Implications for music labels, managers, and artists are discussed. Keywords: Anchorman 2 marketing, marketing Beyoncé’s surprise album, marketing Ron Burgundy, marketing the Beyoncé brand, DIY art- ists, DIY marketing, music marketing, music industry, entertainment in- dustry, film industry

Introduction

When Beyoncé released a new album to an unsuspecting public on December 13, 2013 she was widely praised for the lack of marketing that accompanied the record. Out of the blue, it was there, available worldwide on iTunes. Singles, the most popular configuration on Apple’s store, were not made available. Instead, those wanting Beyoncé’s new music had to purchase the full album for US$15.99. This harkened back to an era when record labels made most of their money from sales of full-length CDs. Because Beyoncé included seventeen new videos, this “visual album”^1 in- cluded enough value that neither fans, critics, nor the greater music indus- try complained. The headlines were supportive:

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kind of success that spawns sequels and prequels. The director/co-writer, Adam McKay, star/co-writer Will Ferrell, and cast members, including Paul Rudd, Steve Carell, and Christina Applegate, carried on with their careers creating and acting in other projects. Anchorman was in their rear- view mirrors. Paramount spent $40 million on prints and promotion for the film.^8 While the theatrical box office didn’t break any records, the film did take on legendary status upon its home video release on December 28, 2004. Rather than package the film with the customary single DVD, Paramount took extra steps. In addition to the original theatrical release, it also made an unrated version of the film available. Also, what has been coined a “spiritual sequel”^9 or “alternate film companion,”^10 Wake Up, Ron Bur- gundy: The Lost Movie was included. This additional film was made up of scenes edited out of the finished theatrical release. Enough content existed to create this standalone film. Because of the film’s eventual airing and re-airing on pay and basic cable stations including HBO, TBS, and TNT, plus the growing influence of video social-sharing networks like YouTube, Anchorman ’s shelf life persisted for years. 11 Anchorman creators Adam McKay and Will Ferrell created comedy video website Funny or Die in April 2007.^12 During a 2008 Funny or Die comedy tour of eight college campuses, Ferrell reprised the Ron Burgundy character and interviewed celebrities including Tom Brokaw. 13 More one- off joke than strategic initiative to further brand Ron Burgundy, the char- acter was put aside by its creators. Anchorman was done. It was time to move on. Other comedies released in the same period as Anchorman , such as Dodgeball ($167 million), 14 50 First Dates ($196 million),^15 and Along Came Polly ($173 million)^16 all grossed more at the box office than An- chorman. But the mix of characters, comedy, and social media fan support helped Anchorman seize a place in America’s cultural zeitgeist. None of the other three received the long-term love from audiences that Anchor- man enjoyed for years (see Table 1). Social media deserves much of the credit for the continued inter- est in the film. “The concept of social media barely existed at the time of the first Anchorman ,” Andrew Runyon, Paramount’s Vice President of International Interactive Marketing, said to Adweek. “Facebook had just been conceived a few months prior, and YouTube and Twitter hadn’t been created. But social has allowed Anchorman to live on as a film. And it

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makes us believe that we have something really zeitgeisty here that we can capitalize on.”^17 “Our fans have been creating content and essentially mar- keting for us,” said Megan Wahtera, Paramount’s Senior Vice President of interactive marketing.^18 Clearly, there was ongoing interest in Anchorman since its 2004 release.

Beyonc é Background (2003-2013)

One year before Anchorman ’s theatrical release, former Destiny’s Child vocalist Beyoncé Knowles released her first solo album, Danger- ously In Love. According to SoundScan, this album has sold 4,910, units 19 in the United States since June 17, 2003. She released three more albums between 2006 and 2011. Table 2 shows release date and album unit sales as of February 2014 for Beyoncé’s four solo album releases, courtesy of SoundScan. 20

Beyoncé stayed in the public eye between 2003 and 2013 with four solo album releases which sold a combined 12,794,906 units. She toured five separate times, a total of 371 shows, including one European tour, one North American tour, and three tours worldwide. 21 There were four promo tours, one major charity concert (in 2003), two telethons, the MTV

Table 1. Comparable Comedies to Anchorman In 2004.

Film ReleaseDate U.S. Box Office^ International Box Office^ Total Box Office Along Came Polly 1/16/2004 $88,097,164 $83,866,222 $171,963, 50 First Dates 2/13/2004 $120,908,074 $75,574,808 $196,482, Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story 6/18/2004^ $114,326,736^ $53,395,574^ $167,722, Anchorman 7/9/2004 $85,288,303 $5,285,885 $90,574,

Album Title Release Date DomesticSales

Dangerously In Love 6/17/2003 4,910, B’Day 8/15/2006 3,365, I Am…Sasha Fierce 11/18/2008 3,126, 4 6/28/2011 1,392, Table 2. Release date and album unit sales as of February 2014 of Beyoncé’s four solo album releases (SoundScan).

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Considering she has only tweeted eight times, 13.2 million people follow Beyoncé on Twitter. She is one of the music industry’s biggest superstars.

General Movie Marketing and Distribution

As with music, there are different classes of movies released on any given weekend. There are the blockbuster films, with production budgets well over $100 million, like Iron Man 3 ($200 million budget) 42 and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($130 million).^43 There are middle-market films, like Lee Daniels’ The Butler ($30 million)^44 and Lone Survivor ($ million).^45 There are also the independent films, many created by indepen- dent filmmakers willing to put the entire budget of the film on their credit cards and face the risk of personal bankruptcy, like Uncross The Stars. 46 Anchorman 2 fell into the middle-market film budget category, with a pro- duction budget of $50 million.^47 Each class of film is marketed based upon the studio budget, the sea- son of its release (e.g., Memorial Day or Christmas), competing releases from other studios, and the number of screens available at that time.^48 The films with the largest production budgets are released on as many screens as possible simultaneously.^49 A film’s gross revenue in its first weekend can be a strong indicator of what its eventual box office will be.^50 And the greater a film’s final theatrical box office, the greater the revenues of future ancillary markets like pay-per-view and home video.^51 In order to maximize publicity a marketing budget can sometimes add nearly 50% to a film’s production budget.^52 Traditionally, the areas in which a studio spends its marketing dollars range from newspapers and magazines to television, from theatrical trail- ers to billboards, from the internet to special events.^53 Most studio films in the middle- and blockbuster-tiers follow standard marketing procedure: a press junket (round-the-clock interviews for one or two days by the stars and director with as many news and entertainment outlets as possible), one or two movie trailers, and appearances on various television talk shows. 54 Online marketing of a film can also be similar across tiers and genres: peri- odically updated Facebook pages and Twitter feeds, plus YouTube videos mainly comprised of the same trailers moviegoers see in theaters.^55 The Anchorman 2 team did not follow tradition.

General Music Marketing and Distribution

Unlike movies, which can have budgets up to $200 million, the bud-

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get for a typical record album is anywhere from $125,000 to $300,000.^56 Marketing costs range from $100,000 to over $500,000 depending upon the artist. Like the film industry, there are tiers of artists. The highest tier is made up of the superstars, like Justin Timberlake (over three million full-length units sold in 2013) and Bruno Mars (over two million). 57 There are middle-tier artists, like Kings of Leon (250,000 full-length units sold in 2013) and Ariana Grande (390,000). 58 The majority of releases are from independent label and DIY (do-it-yourself) artists (to whom most of the public is never exposed). For example, of the twenty million songs avail- able on streaming service Spotify, twenty percent, or four million, have never been streamed.^59 It is widely known that for an artist to sell large quantities of music, he or she needs the help of a major label. In 2013, there was not one artist on the Top 10 Most Streamed Songs or Top 10 Most Played Songs who did not have an association with a major label distributor.^60 Generally, new and unknown artists need the budgets, connections, and expertise of major la- bels if they are to have any hope of making a substantial living in the field. Prior to a major label artist releasing new material, it is traditional for an initial single to be released to radio, along with an accompanying music video (uploaded to YouTube and other video websites, and made available to cable television music networks). The artist may visit radio stations in a region and perform interviews for magazines and newspapers. In addition, a tour supporting the album will be either announced or well underway once it has been released. Beyoncé’s team did not follow tradition.

Anchorman 2 Marketing and Results

When the sequel to a film is announced, normal Hollywood proce- dure is to send out a press release.^61 As with everything related to An- chorman 2 , “normal Hollywood procedure” would not be followed. On March 28, 2012, Will Ferrell, dressed in the maroon suit his character Ron Burgundy wore while broadcasting the news throughout Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy , interrupted Conan O’Brien’s late-night TBS talk show Conan by playing jazz flute, a well-known comic bit from the first film. After Ferrell-as-Burgundy poked fun at O’Brien (“It’s probably something only a professional like me would notice, but…Conan, you look awful.”), the audience erupted at some news: “I want to announce this to everyone here in the Americas…to our friends in Spain, Turkey, and the U. K.—including England, that as of O-900 Mountain Time, Paramount

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marketing. The key component of this marketing variety was actor Will Ferrell’s dressing and acting as the lead Ron Burgundy character at nearly all appearances. This concept worked as the team focused on what a real news anchor does—read the news. Ferrell, as Burgundy, was recorded reading the news about other countries, like Ireland and Australia, in or- der to bring local interest to those territories.^67 The process worked, as Ferrell told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross in December 2014, “We’ve kind of gotten into different pockets of the audience we never would have reached through Ron’s appearances.”^68 The Ron Burgundy/news anchor theme was taken even further. Ferrell, as Burgundy, read a full half-hour newscast as co-anchor of the evening news on North Dakota’s KX News on November 30, 2013, two weeks after an Anchorman exhibit opened in Washington D.C.’s Newseum, an interactive museum of news and journalism.^69 On December 4, 2013 Boston’s Emerson College renamed, for one day, its School of Communication as “The Ron Burgundy School of Com- munication.”^70 Ferrell visited the school in character and held a press con- ference with the Dean of the School of Journalism and the college presi- dent. During the 45-minute Q&A, the Dean and President were not asked a single question.^71 The press conference has received to date over 92, views on YouTube.^72 In addition, there were up to one hundred media re- quests in the Boston area for time with Ferrell/Burgundy. 73 Adam McKay and Will Ferrell’s Funny or Die website also produced a short film in conjunction with CNN titled Burgundy’s America. This film, just over three minutes in length, stars CNN personalities Wolf Blitzer, Chris Cuomo, and Anderson Cooper. 74 Interestingly, Ferrell/Burgundy never speaks on camera. Instead it is a scripted “documentary” with the three CNN anchors talking about their (fictional) relationships, past and present, with Burgundy. As a comic character, Ron Burgundy’s personality was also effective as a pitchman for something not news related: the Dodge Durango. In Au- gust 2013, Funny or Die filmed seventy commercials^75 starring Burgundy. After the spots began airing in October, sales increased by 59%.^76 The real news coverage, Dodge commercials, and CNN documenta- ry were all successful in promoting the film’s release, December 18, 2013. The final five seconds of each thirty-second and sixty-second Durango commercial featured an “In Theaters This Christmas” bumper. The final seven seconds of the CNN piece also featured a bumper with the release date. In addition, Ferrell/Burgundy performed a filmed interview with

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Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning for ESPN The Magazine that to date has received over 4.9 million views.^77 A radio interview done for The Dan Patrick Show was filmed and split into two YouTube videos. Combined, they received nearly 560,000 views. 78 For perspective, the sec- ond most popular Dan Patrick Show interview, with ESPN personality Erin Andrews, received 57,000 views, just over one tenth as popular as the Burgundy interview.^79 Paramount also put in place a promotion based on the traditional movie marketing idea of cross-promoting movies with products. In this case, rather than simply brand the film’s logo on a package, Paramount and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream got a little more inventive. Burgundy’s likeness appeared on packages of a limited edition flavor named “Ron Burgundy’s Scotchy Scotch Scotch.”^80 The product featured butterscotch ice cream with butterscotch swirls. The web page featured a large image of the con- tainer and a description fitting with Burgundy’s attitude and famous oft- repeated expression, “Stay classy.” Memes and GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format, a form of computer image that is capable of animation)^81 were prepared by the Anchorman 2 team and Jetset Studios on a special Tumblr page. Fan engagement, in- cluding creation of their own memes and GIFs, was encouraged. In fact, much time was spent organizing the thousands of user-generated GIFs 82 in order to maximize the promotional possibilities. Paramount didn’t ignore traditional marketing, as there were bill- boards and ads placed on television networks, websites including The Huffington Post , and as trailers before other films.^83 From videos customized for territories all over the world to multiple character-driven appearances in unlikely (for a movie) places, from ice cream to autos to the internet, the marketing surrounding Anchorman 2: The Legend of Ron Burgundy is now considered by some to be not only the future of movie marketing, but the greatest combination of content marketing to date for anything.^84 The Anchorman 2 team did not “force” fans to watch the film with a bombardment of traditional television, print, and social media advertising. They drew attention to themselves by creating entertaining content that brought attention to the movie and its release date without blatantly telling people to go. The content they created—the CNN faux-documentary, the Emerson College press conference, the Newseum exhibit, another appear- ance on Conan hawking an imaginary book by Ron Burgundy featuring

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were ten years older than when the first film came out. They had different lifestyles now; they’d see it when it was convenient for them (and their babysitters), not the movie studio.^90 The box office tallies show that Anchorman 2’s marketing invest- ment was worth the time, money, and effort. Could they have followed the traditional path of movie marketing and turned a profit? Quite possibly. Smartly, the sequel’s budget was middle-tier, which gave more latitude to all involved to experiment and create. The bottom line is that more people came to see Anchorman 2 worldwide than the first film. Anchorman ’s box office was $64.5 million more than its original budget. The Anchorman 2 box office was nearly $119 million more. Based upon these comparisons, one might conclude that Anchorman 2 was 84% more successful than its predecessor. On Friday, February 28, ,^ 2014 Paramount Pictures took the unprec- edented step of releasing a second version of Anchorman 2. Titled An- chorman 2: The Legend Continues: Super-Sized R-Rated Version , the new rendering opened in one thousand theaters for one week only and featured the same story but with all new jokes.^91 This was done in keeping with the tone of the Anchorman 2 marketing. Surprisingly, said Adam McKay, it wasn’t the filmmakers who came up with idea of another release. Rather, it was Paramount, which decided to move ahead mainly because this con- cept had never been done before.^92 The home video was released on April 1, 2014. This move was about more than generating home video revenue. This additional slice of content marketing, albeit on a large scale, also reinforced awareness of the An- chorman /Ron Burgundy brands. For example, it brought more awareness to ancillary markets such as pay-per-view. Viewers now had more choices in how to spend their Anchorman 2 money. There weren’t sequels to Along Came Polly or Dodgeball. Based upon the strong ticket sales and positive worldwide reception to the con- tent surrounding Anchorman 2: The Legend of Ron Burgundy , one might think we will one day see Anchorman 3 : Staying Classy. According to writer/director McKay, we won’t. 93 “It’s done,” he said. It was almost ten years between the first two films. Despite what McKay says, maybe he and Ferrell will revisit the idea in another ten.

Beyoncé Marketing and Results

Five days before Anchorman 2 reached movie theaters, the entertain-

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ment world was rocked by the unannounced release of a new Beyoncé album simply titled Beyoncé. There was no advance single. The artist had not held a press conference nor done the talk show circuit. At a few min- utes after midnight on Friday, December 13, 2013 Beyoncé was suddenly available for consumers to purchase, solely as a full-length album in the iTunes store. What was novel about this surprise approach was how the focus of consumers and the record industry machine over the past decade had been on singles. Ever since Napster had illegally taken individual track downloads into the mainstream in 1999^94 and Apple’s iTunes Store had legitimized the practice in 2003,^95 long-form albums had lost favor among music buyers, much to the chagrin of the major record labels. The twenty-first century record business is drastically different com- pared to the last thirty years of the 1900s. What was once an industry built upon long-form LPs, cassettes, and CDs was also an industry built upon dollars. The retail price of a CD was $18.99 at its peak in the late-1990s. That price meant real dollars in revenue to the labels, enough dollars so that after they paid out manufacturing, publishing, marketing, and artist royalty expenses, they could still keep dollars. Today, it’s a business of pennies.^96 While the labels would love to go back to receiving revenue mainly from full-length album sales, the busi- ness has become one that is based upon the sale of individual tracks, gen- erally priced at $0.99 to $1.29 per song. Critics deride albums stating there is no point in putting out collections of singles in which nine out of every ten songs are not very good.^97 Today labels report album sales as “equiva- lent albums” because, in a land of single-track sales, the majority of sales off of an album come from only one or two songs.^98 Artists also fear today’s singles-driven culture. When Flo Rida can sell two million singles of his song “Club Can’t Handle Me” but only move 62,000 full-length albums,^99 or Cobra Starship can sell two million copies of “You Make Me Feel…” but only 33,000 albums,^100 artists don’t have the “luxury”^101 of sitting back and resting on the success of a single. As artist, songwriter, and Senior Vice President of A&R at Universal Mo- town Records, Ne-Yo, said in mid-2012, “I feel like the thing that makes you go out and get a person’s whole album is you liking that artist, you connecting with that artist.”^102 His suggestion to the industry: Don’t build “fly-by-night, add-water-and-stir artists.” Build icons.^103 Beyoncé is anything but a “fly-by-night” artist. She is an example of

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as a comprehensive audio/visual piece from top to bottom. The antithesis of making singles, the visual album is a non-linear journey through the thoughts and visions of Beyoncé.”^106 The visual portion of Beyoncé was an inclusion of seventeen music videos. This video inclusion was a smart move, as it brought tremendous added value to a project asking consumers to spend $15.99 at iTunes when they were more accustomed to spending $1.29. Including a music video with an audio project is not a new concept. The newness here was the sheer volume of videos included with the release. Fans could perceive this extra content as a great deal. Beyoncé and Columbia Records took a risk with this surprise release by selling exclusively through iTunes. By locking out Target and Walmart, two of America’s top music retailers, and other online stores like Amazon, was she not only limiting sales potential during the iTunes period of ex- clusivity but also in the aftermath should any of these retailers elect to not carry the title out of punitive resentment? Beyoncé broke iTunes sales records with its number-one week,^107 besting the previous first-week sales of Justin Timberlake’s The 20/20 Ex- perience and Taylor Swift’s Red by 27,000 units and 152,000 units, re- spectively. In addition, Beyoncé was the number-one album in 104 of the 119 countries where iTunes is available. If one wanted to calculate the benefit of making Beyoncé exclusive to just one retailer, one might look at the aggregate hype to judge if the marketing exposure and overall buzz would have been the same had she and her team followed the traditional release and distribution model. Ac- cording to Mashable , “Facebook mentions spiked 1,300% in the hours af- ter the album dropped.”^108 Twitter released an animated map showing the location and density of Beyoncé-related tweets during December 12 and

13.^109 While tweets heavily skew toward the United States, international impact of the release is also evident as demonstrated by intense social chatter in Europe, Brazil, Indonesia, South Africa, and Australia. In all, she was mentioned 1.2 million times on Twitter immediately following the album’s release. “That’s 1.2 million essentially free pieces of advertising, perfect for a generation whose news comes in the form of Twitter links and Facebook shares,” wrote Florent Le Mens, a social media strategist in Brisbane, Australia. 110 Searching Google for “Beyoncé new album” yields more than 70 million results. After announcing the album release on her Instagram page, where she has 8 million followers, the post (Surprise!)

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received over 603,000 Likes. Would this amount of social energy have occurred if the album had been announced months in advance and if fans were able to sample a sin- gle or two before deciding whether to buy the album? Possibly. But con- sider Beyoncé’s previous four solo albums. Her first peaked with sales of 4.9 million units; her fourth dropped to 1.4 million. Even if a traditional marketing approach had been applied to Beyonc é, sales would have likely been strong—but not record-breaking. As Maura Johnston, editor of Mau- ra Magazine and ILA Journalism Fellow at Boston College, wrote, “By allowing listeners to click the ‘buy’ button in iTunes when the memory of the album’s announcement was fresh, it cut through the chatter that so many other cultural products fall prey to in the promotion-saturated age.”^111 Interestingly, much of the buzz following the album’s release spec- ulated how other retailers—all shut out from iTunes’ exclusive deal— would react. Industry insiders looked towards Target, Walmart, and Ama- zon; would they carry the album in its physical format? Target did not. Its reasoning was that, because the album had already been made available digitally, potential CD sales would be negatively impacted.^112 But beyond that, perhaps Target’s decision not to sell Beyoncé’s new album (they’d had an exclusive with her in 2011 for 4 ) was a message to the rest of the industry: beware the decisions you make that don’t include us.^113 Walmart and Amazon did carry the album. Beyoncé’s release plan has been described as risky. But was it? Was it risky for Beyoncé to release an album with no advance notice and no pre-marketing to support the release? As the artist’s press release stated when the album first came out: “Stripped of gimmicks, teasers, and mar- keting campaigns, this project is truly about art before hype.”^114 What many people missed as they praised the Beyoncé release was the fact that it was because she was a superstar artist that the surprise release skewed so positive. It was as if every blogger and reporter loved the tactic so much that they didn’t realize Beyoncé, the artist, had been very active promoting herself all along. In fact, 2013 had been one of Be- yoncé’s busiest years (see Table 6). In 1980 John Lennon released the album Double Fantasy. It was his first solo album in five years. During the period from 1975 to 1980, Lennon had not toured the world multiple times, starred in films, enjoyed multi-million dollar endorsements, or appeared as a guest on other artists’

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albums. When asked in 1980 by Playboy magazine what he had done dur- ing those five years, he replied, “Baking bread.”^115 Surely, he was goaded, there had to have been “secret projects” taking up much of his time. “Are you kidding?” Lennon replied, “There were no secret projects…Because bread and babies, as every housewife knows, is a full-time job. There ain’t no space for other projects.”^116 Beyoncé’s first child, Blue Ivy, was born on January 7, 2012. Nine- teen months later, the superstar was not at home, John Lennon style, bak- ing bread. She was busy releasing a surprise album to a fan base she had been meticulously cultivating. While Beyoncé was an album that came out of nowhere, and the marketing leading up to it was not traditional, there was a year-long strategy that culminated in record sales and a massive public, critical, and social media reaction. In all that was written about her in December 2013, most of the accolades focused on the surprise itself. The bloggers and traditional media seemed to miss that, while her fans had no idea an album was coming, they also had no idea that they were being marketed to so fiercely and intensely all year long. In other words, what was being marketed was the Beyoncé brand. It didn’t matter what she was selling, e.g., concert tickets, DVDs, or a fra- grance. She spent 2013 selling us Beyoncé and all that the Beyoncé brand represents: fun, energy, and empowerment. That an album was released with no advance warning did not mean there was no advance marketing. There was, but the message was about the person, not the product. And in the end, after moving away from the traditional model and focusing in- stead on the grander idea of artist and career—not individual unit sales— Beyoncé and her team succeeded.

Conclusion

In order for an NFL running back to score a touchdown when the ball is handed off to him, he has to find a hole. He must see where everyone who wants to tackle him is going, and either run through before they get there or slip beyond their grasp. The running back isn’t somebody the team randomly selects from the stands. He is a professional athlete, finely tuned and trained to be on that gridiron. And when handed the ball, he doesn’t decide on the spot where to run. On the contrary, he is working in conjunc- tion with ten other teammates on the field and a full coaching staff on the sidelines, all of whom have planned and practiced for years for this very moment.

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The Anchorman 2 and Beyoncé teams were well prepared for their respective games. Adam McKay and Will Ferrell didn’t decide out of the blue to put out a movie sequel and create incredible supporting content. Beyoncé didn’t decide on December 12 that she wanted to put out an al- bum when the clock struck midnight. In order for each project to achieve successful results, the two teams had to have strong, comprehensive plans in place, plans that took advantage of each party’s strengths. The team around Anchorman 2 was made up of funny, intensely cre- ative people. The actors and creators were comedians before they were stars. Taking comedic risks and making people laugh is in their blood. If being funny was what they knew best, they wisely took full advantage of those gifts and made more than just a funny movie. They set the bar for other content creators (movies, music, arts and sciences, etc.) to do more. Based upon the principles of Anchorman 2 marketing, the project isn’t over when the director on the set yells, “That’s a wrap.” In fact, it’s just the start. Beyoncé, artist and businesswoman, took the same approach. Her December 13 “surprise” release was a well-calculated event that took into account her skills as a performer, personality, and music superstar. A like- able person with a strong voice and beautiful face, Beyoncé was able to spend a full year promoting her album worldwide—even though nobody knew that was what she was doing. By being the type of star who could sell out venues, attain high-profile sponsorships, and appear at even higher profile events, Beyoncé was able to take advantage of her place in popular culture for a full year before her album came out. Perhaps the most important key that both the Anchorman 2 and Be- yoncé teams shared was the focus on creativity. Both teams could have followed traditional paths and made money. Nearly ten years of pent- up demand for a sequel was probably assurance enough that Paramount would earn back its investment and have a property that could generate modest ancillary revenue for years to come. Therefore, the Anchorman 2 team didn’t have to film 70 Dodge commercials. But they did. Will Ferrell didn’t have to appear in character as Ron Burgundy in so many different places. But he did. Beyoncé could have released a single to radio in No- vember to prime fans for her album release. But she didn’t. She could have announced on YouTube or at a concert that her new album was coming out on December 13 so her fans could keep $15.99 on hand before spending it on other Christmas gifts. But she didn’t.