Wayne and Garth Really Did Know Best

If you were alive in the 90s at all, then you can probably call to mind with some ease phrases such as "excellent!," "party on!," and "schwing!". If you can't, then you unfortunately haven't experienced the comic genius that is Wayne's World: the SNL skit-turned-major movie success of 1992. Besides being an incredibly hilarious film, Wayne's World pioneered a marketing strategy that reached young males that few other films could manage. 

Deborah Broderson wrote in the St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture that "the promotional team took the unprecedented step of pouring the majority of their relatively small budget into buying advertising time on the youth-oriented cable music channel, MTV, including sponsorship of an hour-long special on the film, and the bet paid off with huge box-office sales to the targeted youth audience." This strategy helped to target cynical and hard-to-reach teenage boys that were the perfect audience for this film and are notorious for being submissive of advertising geared towards them. 

Daniel Terdiman wrote an article for wired.com about the desirability to puncture the marketing-protective bubble that surrounds what is quickly becoming known as "mooks". "For the film industry, finding new ways to reach young males in particular is crucial. That's because young men under 34 are watching less television than they have in the past, spending more of their free time doing other activities, like playing video games or surfing online. But so far, no one seems to have settled on a plan." 

Sixteen years later and movie execs still haven't figured out how to reach the mooks that they so desperately seek, yet the execs that marketed Wayne's World somehow got it right. By incorporating the cynical views of the target audience into the film, the execs helped to bridge the gap between the film marketing and the mooks. The scene that best depicts this incorporation was when Wayne and Garth are approached by the producer who tells them that they must sell out to corporate sponsors and that they have no choice in the matter. At this point, Wayne and Garth, played by Mike Myers and Dana Carvey, launch into a five minute comical sketch in which they endorse a multitude of products ranging from Pepsi to Doritos to Grey Poupon Mustard. Wayne's World should act as an example to movie execs today that are trying to target the unreachable young male demographic. 

Never underestimate the power of the mook.