Austin’s Powering His Way to Forefront

Yeah, baby, he’s everywhere!

Stop at a newsstand and see Mike Myers as Austin Powers on the cover of GQ, Rolling Stone and Entertainment Weekly (he’s inside even more magazines posing with a milk mustache and a martini glass full of milk for a “Got Milk?” ad). Hit your TV clicker and see Philips’ HDTV commercials with Austin Powers cavorting on a big-screen TV. Log on to America On-Line and see Austin in a prominent pop-up window. Cruise the Sunset Strip and see a billboard of Austin straddling a Virgin “Shaglantic” jet. Open your mail and find a MasterCard invitation with Austin’s picture. Dial Movie Phone for movie tickets and--oh, behave!--hear Austin give instructions for advance film ticket orders.

It’s impossible to put a precise value on all these promotional tie-ins for “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” which earned a positively shagadelic $57 million in its first four days.

Top executives at New Line Cinema, who made the film, say the promotions are easily worth tens of millions of dollars at the box office. Better still, they cost New Line nothing; in some cases, the companies paid New Line a fee to use Austin Powers’ likeness in their ads.

In the competitive summer movie marketplace, when most studios spend $40 million to $50 million to market a major film, New Line executives say they will only spend slightly more than $30 million to market “Austin Powers II.” The promotional tie-in blitzkrieg represents free advertising from companies eager to associate themselves with a movie that has become a pop-culture juggernaut.

“It’s always better to have other people say you’re cool than say it yourself,” explains Bob Friedman, New Line Cinema’s co-chairman of worldwide marketing. “It means that you’re responding to the demand instead of trying to create it. We had a myriad of promotion opportunities, but we were very careful to go with something hip or unusual. We wanted this to be the un-’Godzilla.’ ”

In the two years since the release of the original film, “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery,” New Line has orchestrated a textbook marketing campaign designed to transform the sequel of what was a modest hit into a mega-blockbuster. The new film isn’t just the beginning of a new franchise; it’s a movie marvel, having already made more money than the original film did in its entire theatrical run.

New Line did not have great expectations for the original film, especially since its star, Mike Myers, had enjoyed little box-office success since his 1992 hit, “Wayne’s World.” The studio hedged its bets by selling off the film’s foreign rights before it hit the theaters. Released with little fanfare in May 1997, “Austin Powers” made less than $10 million in its opening weekend, never topped the box-office charts and got little critical respect. Still, it ended up turning a profit, making $54 million on a budget of only $16 million.

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New Line still wasn’t sure what it had when the film debuted as a video rental in the fall of 1997. But it was video that transformed “Austin” into a king of comedy. Buoyed by good word of mouth, its clever sendup of Bond films and swinging London attracted a legion of family viewers, appealing both to parents who remembered the ‘60s and kids who latched on to Austin’s clownish “Shag me, baby!” catch-phrases.

In April 1998, when New Line began selling the video for $14.98, the film took off. It instantly hit the VideoScan bestseller chart, where it has been in the Top 20 for 62 consecutive weeks. The video has earned $47 million, making it one of the rare live-action films to make almost as much money in home video as it did in the theaters.

“The video was essentially a long commercial for the sequel,” says New Line Productions President Michael De Luca. “It was a huge factor in making the film into a phenomenon. But we were also helped by the fact that the movie came at the beginning of a big new comedy wave. People were going to see ‘The Wedding Singer,’ ‘Something About Mary’ and ‘The Waterboy,’ and when they wanted to see something else, they went back to watch ‘Austin Powers.’ ”

New Line did not have even have a sequel agreement in place with Myers. But after seeing how well the film was doing in video, the studio promptly firmed up plans for a follow-up. And this time it didn’t sell off any foreign rights. Certain that the new “Star Wars” film would dominate the early weeks of the summer, the studio picked June 11 as its opening weekend, announcing the date late last year before the sequel even began shooting.

“Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” also provided the sequel with an unlikely marketing hook. New Line’s teaser trailer, released at Thanksgiving to help build awareness for the film, cleverly created an underdog image for “Austin Powers” by playing off moviegoers’ anticipation for “Star Wars.” The opening sequence opened with “Star Wars”-style sci-fi footage, but then zoomed in on Myers as Dr. Evil, saying to the camera, “You were expecting someone else?”

The trailer’s kicker: “If you see one movie this summer, see ‘Star Wars.’ But if you see two movies, see ‘Austin Powers.’ ”

Created largely by “Powers” co-screenwriter Michael McCullers, the trailer was such a hit that New Line aired it again as a TV spot during the Super Bowl. “It really positioned the movie by saying, ‘We’re No. 2, but we try harder,’ ” Friedman explained. “We gave respect to the big guy, ‘Star Wars,’ but had a chance to show the unique appeal of our film too.”

As many reviewers have noted, the film is dotted with plugs for various products, including a highly visible Virgin Atlantic billboard and a scene entirely set at a Starbucks--it turns out that Dr. Evil has taken over the chain of coffee shops in his quest for world domination. Even the movie’s jokes are product-friendly: During one of their tiffs, Dr. Evil dismisses his son as a hapless pretender, “the Diet Coke of evil.”

The Virgin billboard was part of New Line’s promotion package with the airline. The Starbucks scene was simply a joke written into the earliest versions of the Myers-McCullers script. “It was not a promotional idea,” says Erwin Stoff, Myers’ manager and one of the film’s producers. “It was a perfect, funny way to illustrate how an evil empire could infiltrate every street corner in America. I called up [Starbucks Chairman] Howard Schultz and ran the idea by him. He loved it. He said, ‘Go with God, you’ve got my permission.’ ”

The film also features several comic scenes set during a staged episode of “The Jerry Springer Show.” Says Stoff: “Jerry immediately told me, ‘When? Where? And how do I get there?’ Everyone wanted an identification with this movie.”

Although some viewers have expressed concern that the film had been oversaturated with promotions, even rival studio marketers praise the campaign. “New Line did a remarkable job of getting into everyone’s psyche without offending anyone,” said one marketing chief. “It’s all a matter of attitude--you can get away with a lot more when you’re tongue-in-cheek.”

New Line execs point out that nobody complained about “Star Wars’ ” tie-ins with a myriad of high-profile products. “We only did the tie-ins that made sense for the attitude of the movie,” Friedman says. “When we did fast food, we did Big Boy, which was already part of the movie. When we did an airline, we did Virgin, because it’s a hip, risk-taking company. When we did a media outlet, we did specials with MTV, because they’re irreverent and fun.”

MTV has been an enormously valuable promotional ally. The video channel did a half-hour “Austin Powers” special, featured Myers as Austin on “The MTV Video Awards” and has been playing the soundtrack’s Madonna video an average of 14 times a day.

New Line’s “Austin Powers” Web site, which displays photos, interviews and reviews (well, only the good ones), has been getting more than 1 million hits a day. The studio’s online store is selling “Austin” martini glasses, talking key-chains, neckties (“Not a clip-on, baby!”) and what the site coyly refers to as a Swedish-made enlarger.

The true sign of fan appeal? Rolf Mittweg, New Line’s co-chairman of worldwide marketing, says the film’s bus shelter posters are being stolen almost as fast as they’re put up. “You know you have a phenomenon when everyone wants a piece of you,” he says. “But we’re in this for the long run. We’re building a franchise we hope will be around for a long time.”