If you are walking through any of Manhattan’s subway stations and Marilyn Monroe happens to flirt with you or, oh my, you notice her skirt blowing up (à la The Seven year Itch) as the subway rolls in, enjoy!
It’s all part of a campaign to promote Lifetime [1]’s movie The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe, premiering at the end of the month and currently using brand new interactive digital Out-of-Home ads in the New York City MTA subway. The campaign also involves print, TV and digital.
Developed by the Control Group [2]’s Damian Gutierrez, associate partner, working with creative agency Horizon Media [3] for Lifetime, the ad originally reminded me of the ads in the Swedish subway for hair care products where the model’s hair blows when the train comes in. However, the ads for the new Marilyn Monroe movie had something extra to contend with: the audio sensors.
“The trains in each station all vary in sound levels,” says Gutierrez. “For example, the F train is very quite while the C train is very loud. That meant that everything had to be tuned accordingly for each station.”
Based on J. Randy Taraborrelli’s New York Times bestseller of the same name, The Secret Life of Marilyn Monroe traces the actress’s life growing up and hiding her darkest secrets from the world where she was a major sex symbol. Kelli Garner plays the legendary star Marilyn Monroe in Lifetime’s four-hour event premiering Saturday, May 30, and Sunday, May 31, at 8pm ET/PT. The miniseries, which uncovers many closely-guarded secrets the blonde bombshell kept from the public, also stars Academy Award winner Susan Sarandon as Marilyn’s biggest secret of all, her mother Gladys, long institutionalized for mental illness. Academy Award and Golden Globe nominee Emily Watson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan also headline the cast while Sarandon’s daughter Eva Amurri Martino plays Gladys in her youth. Watson portrays Grace McKee, Marilyn’s childhood guardian.
The movie was produced by Asylum Entertainment [4], which produced the miniseries The Kennedys, which won four of the ten Emmy Awards for which it was nominated, and Ring of Fire, which garnered four additional Emmy nods.
Lifetime is the first marketer in the U.S. to use innovative audio-sensory advertising technology in the New York City MTA subway system. The first kiosk execution features actress Kelli Garner playing on one of the most iconic images of the 20th century: the wind up-drafting Marilyn Monroe’s dress. In a modern twist, her dress (red, rather than white) appears to be blown by the wind created by the train approaching subway platforms. The second execution, for use on non-platform subway station screens across the city, features the actress smiling and flirting with passer-by’s.
Part of A+E Networks [5], Lifetime is a premier female-focused entertainment destination dedicated to offering high quality original programming spanning scripted series, non-fiction series and movies.