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David Mumpower: I think everyone has hit on the key element here. Universal is aware of their lack of recognition in the animated movie marketplace. They took the time to analyze the requisite elements key to a massive opening weekend. I had been split on this project in that I loved the trailers, but I was scared off by Universal's track record. In the end, they effectively bought the opening weekend by making the aforementioned Minions omnipresent. If you pull up Facebook, there they are. If you go to Best Buy, there they are. If you turn on a television, well, you get the point. And the key is that they're adorable. If they were annoying and lowest common denominator, the film would have failed, but the marketing campaign correctly deduced how engaging they are as well as the why of it. The advertising understands the heart of the film, and we don't see enough of that these days. This is a tremendous job all around and Universal has earned their well deserved victory lap here.

As an aside, I think that the recent quality of How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 also helped in that consumers have been given significant positive reinforcement by their 2010 animated films, Shrek excluded. That entices them to give a new property like Despicable Me the benefit of the doubt. That's an underrated aspect of the industry in that one studio can be opportunistic by capitalizing off the hard work of their competitors. People are always so focused on that element of competition, but this is the thread in the tapestry that isn't given enough consideration. A movie can draft off of prior quality releases. The summer box office campaign has been a struggle due to the fact that this sort of positive reinforcement hasn't been created by enough releases. Action films in particular could have used that boost.

Kim Hollis: I do think that along with the stellar marketing, there's something to the fact that Despicable Me looks different than other animated offerings. There's always something interesting about seeing stories told from the side of the "villain". On top of that, it looked pretty clear that this movie also has a heavy emphasis on family connections, and those sorts of stories always seem to attract a wide ranging audience.

I really need a minion or two

Kim Hollis: How much of the success of Despicable Me do you attribute to the quality of the trailers as opposed to the ubiquity of the minions on Facebook, at Best Buy and even on BOP (much to the chagrin of some of our readers)?

Josh Spiegel: Ubiquity is sometimes the best thing that happens in a marketing campaign, even if it winds up being slightly obnoxious. My iffiness at seeing this movie is that those ads and trailers are all doing their best to not show me much of anything in the movie, as opposed to silly characters talking in gibberish. Also, as much as I'm glad to see Best Buy encouraging people to use their cell phones in a movie, I'm not sure it's wise to enhance audience participation in this fashion.

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