<img class="alignleft size-full wp-image-2660" title="Harry Potter" src="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/Harry-Potter.jpg" alt="" width="143" height="213" />For many, literally hundreds of millions of people, just glancing a <a href="http://harrypotter.warnerbros.com/harrypotterandthedeathlyhallows/mainsite/index.html">Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1</a> movie poster is enough to make your heart beat faster, your blood grow warmer, and your belly fill with that warm, tingling sensation that is excitement and anticipation. And after a full two weeks of play, the movie is still top at the box office beating out rivals like <a href="http://adisney.go.com/disneypictures/tangled/#/home/">Tangled</a>, the new Disney animated feature. As the seventh and most successful midnight opening in the franchise, what is the magic (so to speak) behind the Wizarding success? And can other fantasy flicks like <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1324999/">Twilight: Breaking Dawn</a> and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0980970/">The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader</a> compete?

My answer? No, they cannot compete with the success of the Harry Potter movies for 3 reasons<a href="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/?p=2658">[...]</a>

I’m in love with the marketing and media behind the film “Black Swan,” set to debut this Friday, December 3. My reasons are three-fold:

1. Effective and prolific buzz generation: Let’s talk about the big names in bright lights in this film. Darren Aronofsky. Natalie Portman. Vincent Cassel. Winona Ryder. Combine them with “Venice Film Festival Opening Night 2010″ (among various other prestigious mentions). And the PR goes wild: Is this an Oscar shoo-in? Is Portman the most important actress of our generation? These are the two big recurring questions in the horde of reviews. Hype for Aronofsky is strong as well, with multiple comparisons to David Cronenberg and Roman Polanski. In addition, they’ve attracted fashion bloggers to rave about the set clothing designed by Rodarte and the jewelry sponsored by Swarovski (today I saw Swarovski’s Twitter reciprocating the shoutout). They highlight the rendition of the classic Tchaikovsky soundtrack. And on top of everything else, they capitalize on the controversial elements: Portman’s “shocking” weight loss and the explicit love scenes. I could go on, but you can do a Google search and see how many fawning or satiric reviews and exhilarated twitter posts spawn minute by minute[...]

I went to see the movie about the creation of Facebook – The Social Network – last night. All weekend I’d been hearing people talk about it. One person even said something along the lines of, “I want to update my status about how good that movie was.” So, I went, I watched, I loved.

I wasn’t expecting to like it. I was expecting it to be another Ben Mezrich creation of fortune meets the already fortunate (we all remember 21). And while Zuckerberg, as a Harvard student, certainly didn’t go from rags to riches, he did create the website that literally defines a generation – my generation. My grandfather had the great depression, my father had Vietnam , my older cousins had Y2K, I have Facebook[...]

<h2><strong>Five Key Trends That Will Shape Our Media World
</strong></h2>
<img class="alignleft" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7a/Social_network_film_poster.jpg" alt="" width="150" height="222" />Ahh fall. Mild temperatures, low humidity, fantasy football. After a long hot summer the team here at Luminosity is optimistically looking forward to enjoying a cool crisp autumn. As media gurus, however, it's not all fun and cardigans for us. Nope, we are charged with the awesome responsibility of keeping our fingers on the pulse, constantly scanning the landscape for insights based on shifting consumer tastes, media trends and cultural breakthroughs. We do this in service of our clients…and you of course.

Now this task used to be fairly straightforward. We'd attend a few Upfronts to get a feel for the fall TV calendar, scan the essential September magazines for pop culture trends, scope out the product roadmaps at the big tech firm and that was it. Simple, clean, easy…break out the apple cider. But now things are a bit more complicated. Convergence is a son of a gun. These days everything matters. TV ain't what it used to be, print is struggling and digital is a beast to keep up with. There is really nothing we can ignore. Technology, politics, the economy and cultural happenings are muddying the waters and wreaking havoc on an already rapidly shifting media environment. Crazy right? Well don't worry, we've got you covered. Go enjoy your fall foliage tour (you should really see Newport this time of year…it's lovely). Below we have compiled a list of 5 key fall 2010 media trends to watch for. <a href="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/?cat=350">Enjoy.</a>

I caught myself playing a fruit slicing game on the iPhone 4G for a good half hour the other day. The point of the game was to swipe your finger across the screen and slice fruit as they flew up from the air, and funnily enough I was addicted to it[...]

It has happened again. Somehow, magically, the trailer for <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0800369/">Thor</a> was leaked at <a href="http://www.comic-con.org/cci/">Comic Con</a> 2010 in San Diego. Before that in 2009 it was <a href="http://ironmanmovie.marvel.com/">Iron Man 2</a>. In 2008, <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0458525/">X-Men Origins: Wolverine</a>. See the pattern? Doesn't it seem strange that each year at Comic Con – the biggest gathering of freaks, geeks, and comic book junkies – a trailer for a Comic Book movie is leaked?
<p style="text-align: center;"><img class="size-full wp-image-1561 aligncenter" title="leaked-trailer" src="http://luminositymarketing.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/leaked-trailer.jpg" alt="" width="490" height="150" /></p>
I don't think it is so much coincidental as it is smart. So smart. It is all about buzz. The people that attend any given Comic Con are going to be the target audience for comic book movies. It certainly doesn't take a genius to figure that out. So, it makes sense that a special viewing of these trailers would take place in such a forum.Then, inevitably each year, a star trailer is leaked. Why? Is it because the attendees are members of some elite hacker organization, hell bent on providing this content to others who weren't lucky enough to be at the convention? My guess is no. Allowing limited and perceptually illegitimate access to these trailers provides the perfect buzz that these movies want to create[...]

If I never see another movie poster with the two leads holding guns and the title plastered across the top it will be too soon. I know the phrase, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” makes sense logically, but just because the wheel has already been invented doesn’t mean the general public wants to see it everywhere, all the time, on everything. It seems that the original purpose of the movie poster is long gone and replaced by the draw of big name actors[...]