News UK promoted Warner Bros’ forthcoming release, In the Heart of the Sea, in The Times with a creative and original use of print advertising.
The highlight of the advertising campaign was a panoramic half wrap of The Times, which opens out into a poster, a formatting first for the newspaper.
The wrap is the equivalent of eight pages and includes an inside front cover double page spread, inside back cover, pull out panoramic poster – the largest format available in The Times – and outside back cover. The wrap was collated using various original articles and also features an exclusive interview with director Ron Howard and information about the film.
Alex Lewis, vice president and director of marketing, film at Warner Bros Pictures UK said, ‘In the Heart of the Sea is based on a real tale of survival, so who better to partner with than the UK’s paper of record, who reported on it in the 1800s? The original archived material from The Times about the sinking of the Essex gives us fascinating insight into the true story that inspired the film.’
The page was produced using 19th century printing methods with the design of the page being authentic in terms of size, column width, typefaces and masthead.
The movie is based on the true story of a whale ship that was rammed and sunk by a whale in 1820, the story upon which the American classic Moby Dick was based. The Times was the first newspaper in the UK to report the sinking in 1821 and the poster features an image of a specially-created period front page collated from authentic 1800s editorial from the newspaper’s archives.
