Inside ‘Wicked’s’ Marketing Blitz: How Universal Courted 400 Brands and Spent Big to Guarantee the Musical Was ‘Everywhere’

variety.com:

Rebecca Rubin Senior Film and Media Reporter So if you care to find “Wicked,” look… just about anywhere. You’d have to be flattened by a farmhouse to miss the “Wicked” promotional onslaught.

From Starbucks drinks (Elphaba cold brew, topped with green matcha foam, anyone?) to Emerald City Lego sets, “Shiz University” sweaters at Target and OPI’s “Fiyero’s My Mani” nail polish (it’s a shade of cobalt blue), Universal has partnered with more than 400 corporate brands to create scores of products and tie-ins to launch the big-screen musical extravaganza.

And the studio didn’t stop with themed coffee beverages and winter wear. Manhattan’s Empire State Building was illuminated in pink and green, the signature colors of the film’s witchy protagonists, while earlier this year, stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande stopped by the Summer Olympic games in Paris in Elphaba and Glinda cosplay.

All this publicity wasn’t just a runaway tornado. It’s all been meticulously designed by Universal’s chief marketing officer Michael Moses, who told movie theater owners that his mission with “Wicked” was being “just short of obnoxious.” “We live in an environment where monoculture doesn’t happen in the way it used to,” he told Variety. “So, you have to be everywhere.” An onslaught of all things Oz, however, doesn’t come cheap.