Wide Eye Media invites brands to ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ action

Forget Christmas, it's time for brands to plan for Valentine's Day, and what better way than to get a piece of some Fifty Shades of Grey action?

Cinema advertising sales house Wide Eye Media is now inviting marketers to consider targeting the largely female audience expected to attend the Sam Taylor-Johnson film when it opens on Valentine's "Eve", February 13th.

Some Irish cinemas have began taking bookings, while its trailers broke records the first week they were released with more than 100 million views. These views came from a combination of official and unofficial YouTube videos as well as other online platforms.

The S&M-themed romance, based on the book by E.L. James, is "ideal for targeting females", according to Wide Eye, which says its box office and audience profile will be "similar to that of the Sex and the City franchise". The Sex and the City profile was 78 per cent and 82 per cent female for the original movie and its sequel respectively, with 65 per cent of attendees of both films in the 15-34 age group. The receipts weren't too shabby either: Sex and the City took €4.1 million at the Irish box office in 2008, with Sex and the City 2 clocking up €3.2 million two years later.

Anyone easily wearied by hype machines should gird their loins now, as Wide Eye's sales pitch asserts that Fifty Shades of Grey is "guaranteed to be one of the most provocative and talked about films ever made".