Baby Beluga vs A Lion, A Witch and A Wardrobe

I have met Raffi twice in my life, once at BALLE, where he opened for David Suzuki and once at the Social Venture Institute conference at Hollyhock. At SVI he told the crowd about how he had been approached by a major film company to make Baby Beluga into a children’s film. Although excited about the idea, Raffi had to turn them down once he learned that they planned to market the film to children directly, and through partnerships with fast food companies.

He made a request for proposals to the audience to see if we had any ideas on how we could market this film ethically.

I have been mulling this idea over in my head for a few months now. This is what we do at Creative Wonders, after all. And beyond mulling ideas over, we also do ethical marketing.

With The Lion the With and the Wardrobe, which is the first of the Narnia series, opening today – it is interesting to see the contrast. It’s Christian focus brought in a lot of support for Disney from the religious right. But they made no bones about joining forces with McDonalds, Virgin Atlantic, General Mills, Kodak and others to push fast food and products into the face of children too young to make informed decisions about the product, or undersand the nature of advertising specifically.

But did it work? This opening weekend, the first of the Narnia grossed $67 million at Canadian and American theatres. So yeah.

Can Baby Beluga compete with that without the help of sugary sodas and happy meals? Sounds like an interesting project.