The new horror movie Smile wins for most clever marketing ever!
At three Major League Baseball games on Friday, actors appeared in the stands with spooky, unwavering smiles.
The viral promo even extended to Good Morning America, where a creepily smiling person could be spotted in the window behind Hoda Kotb.
According to Sports Illustrated, the actors appeared at the Red Sox-Yankees, Mets-Athletics, and Cardinals-Dodgers games and successfully freaked out baseball fans both in-person and through their TV screens.
The ploy definitely got fans talking and drew attention to the upcoming Smile movie, which is out September 30.
What’s perhaps even more impressive than the marketing tactic is the fact that the actors were able to hold the smiles for that long.
As reported by AV Club, the actors were able to stand still and smile for “several innings at a time.”
Smile follows a doctor who experiences a traumatic event involving a patient, which triggers bizarre, unexplained occurrences in her life.
(Also known as: creepy smiling people.)
The film’s trailer has over 19 million views and made waves on social media when it came out.
One person tweeted, “Whoever is doing the advertisement for #SmileMovie is way too creepy. They put a woman in the baseball stands behind home plate so she would be on camera. And all she did was smile. IT WAS FREAKY.”
The scary smilers were at least polite, as one even obeyed a security guard who asked her to sit down (smile unfaltering, of course).
“The absolute balls on this security guard to confront a literal demon,” another person tweeted of the interaction.
Watch the Smile trailer, below:
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