‘Colored Girls’ launches mobile marketing campaign

Lionsgate is flexing its cross-platform muscles to promote the Nov. 5 release of Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls.”

Lionsgate marketing chief Tim Palen, with a sideline gig in photographic portraiture, has already shot eight “living portraits” of the film’s ensemble cast, including Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Kerry Washington, Loretta Divine, Whoopi Goldberg, Anika Noni Rose, Phylicia Rashad and Loretta Devine, on 35mm film.

Those portrait images, besides being shown in a Manhattan gallery, are also part of the movie’s promotional poster campaign and trailer and have been circulating online for the past several weeks.

Now Lionsgate has teamed up with Augme Technologies for a mobile marketing campaign that enables Smartphone users to view the “For Colored Girls” movie trailer, the “Living Portraits” gallery cast members, a film synopsis, cast and crew information and a text reminder for the Nov. 5 release date, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Lionsgate going the extra mile for Perry’s latest movie follows the filmmaker’s nine previous theatrical releases by Lionsgate since “Diary of a Mad Black Woman” in 2005 grossing nearly $481 million at the North American box office.

Tyler Perry wrote and directed the movie adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s classic play “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When The Rainbow Is Enuf.” Perry, Paul Hall and Roger M. Bobb produced the film.

Lionsgate will also release Perry’s “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” the adaptation of the popular play, on April 22, 2011.