Last week Twentieth Century Fox launched the UK's first voicemail message campaign, sending out 27,000 recorded messages to promote the DVD release of Minority Report, starring Tom Cruise. It was devised by Cunning Stunts using an audio marketing technology Voice Reach from a company called Xpedite.
However, it has emerged that Sacha Baron Cohen pipped the Hollywood midget globally, with an earlier voicemail campaign to promote the release of Ali G Indahouse in Australia. Distributor UIP pushed the character's particular brand of humour with calls to 65,000 mobile phones playing a 25-second ad recorded by Ali G himself: "Me want yo to know me new movie iz comin' your way so mark it in ya diaries on July 18th and take ya posse wif ya."
The thinking was that males aged 15 to 25 down under were hard to reach with TV and print ads.
Apparently the message caused no stir in the Aussie massives. Contrast this with the supposedly squeaky-clean Cruise - listeners heard his character breathlessly ask, "Where is my minority report?" triggering several complaints to the ASA. One expressed concern the heavy breathing could be mistaken for a nuisance caller. For real.
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