Smoke fills the screen as Skye Riley marches powerfully through a room full of figures silhouetted in white.
The video was posted last month to the Skye Riley Nation TikTok, a page dedicated to someone who appears to be a massive pop star, with content similar to what you’d see on the TikToks of Taylor Swift or Canadian talent Tate McRae.
Except there’s one stark difference: Skye Riley isn’t real. She’s the fictional protagonist from Paramount’s recent hit horror film Smile 2, played by Naomi Scott.
Experts say Riley’s profile is such an effective marketing campaign because its realistic appearance can attract new audiences, while also serving as something that is shareable and engaging for people who are in on the secret.
Different strategies with same end goal
The authenticity of the videos on Riley’s page is what stands out to Aleena Mazhar Kuzma, senior vice-president and managing director at Fuse Create, a Toronto-based advertising agency.
She said the marketers are “capturing attention” of users by creating something that resembles a video someone would engage with organically on their feed. When users visit Skye Riley’s profile, they can click a link that takes them to a website promoting Riley’s music from the movie — which is being marketed as an album — and other Paramount products.
And if the video’s comments are any indication, some users genuinely don’t know that Riley is not a real person. “The way I was confused with this until googling” reads one. This speaks to the organic way some users are coming across the video.
The marketing for Smile 2 is an attempt to live up to the savvy strategy for the original Smile, a film about about a therapist tormented by increasingly terrifying visions. You may recall back in 2022 when the first Smile came out, actors sporting creepy smiles attended major public events like MLB and NFL games. That campaign went viral, spurring the creation of dozens of articles and online reaction everywhere.
Kuzma says this kind of marketing resonates because it’s “disruptive.”
“It becomes almost like a sort of folklore,” according to retail analyst Bruce Winder.
New medium, old tricks
This idea of creating folklore is not unchartered territory. Widely considered to be one of the greatest horror movies ever, The Blair Witch Project’s entire marketing scheme was based on the idea that its actors were real people and that the film itself was a documentary.
Originally made on a budget of $30,000 US, the film went on to gross nearly $250 million worldwide after its release.
Even this year’s horror standout Longlegs played on the idea of realism by publishing a cryptic letter in the Seattle Times, similar to something the Zodiac Killer may have written, and deploying other creepily realistic assets across the internet.
The strategy of blurring what’s real and fake also worked for Smile. The first film, which was released shortly after the viral stunt, grossed $216 million US worldwide against a budget of $17 million.
As of now, the sequel has reportedly generated $130 million US against a budget of $28 million.
‘Humanize’ characters in our reality
The Smile franchise isn’t alone. The uber-powerful corporation Vought International from Amazon Prime Video’s hugely popular superhero satire series The Boys has an X account where it regularly posts, often mirroring real-life current events.
In one example, a character withdraws her name from consideration as Head of Homeland Security.
It’s with a heavy heart that Firecracker has withdrawn her name from consideration as Head of Homeland Security. Believe all the lies you want, but the TRUTH is that she simply has too much on her plate being VNN’s lead anchor. She looks forward to impacting this nation’s youth… pic.twitter.com/fdqYx7IWEx
The post was made just one day after former U.S. congressman Matt Gaetz withdrew his name from consideration to be U.S. president-elect Donald Trump’s attorney, which came after the House ethics committee deadlocked on releasing a report into allegations of Gaetz having sex with a 17-year-old female and using illegal drugs.
The post had more than 2 million views, with many of the more than 400 comments referencing the Matt Gaetz scandal.
Kuzma also points to characters like Deadpool, who is also on social media and has made appearances in ads for Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds’s Aviation Gin (Reynolds also plays Deadpool), along with characters we’ve known for decades like Tony the Tiger, as other examples of brands blurring the lines between fiction and reality.
“There’s a ton of opportunity to take that character and actually humanize them in our world,” she added.
When a character becomes more accessible or relatable, they (and whatever they’re advertising) stand out more to someone being bombarded with products, said Winder.
“It just makes the connection between the consumer or the viewer that much stronger,” he added.
Spoiler alert: while the end of Smile 2 may have given us an indication of Skye Riley’s fate, the hordes of comments on her TikTok (and the confirmation of a Smile 3 in the works) suggest that the fans aren’t done with her — or the franchise — just yet.
