If anything, Amazon’s latest activation has a massive Reach.
Ahead of the Las Vegas Raiders stomping the Los Angeles Chargers on Prime Video’s latest Thursday Night Football gameAmazon released a giant, 15-foot-tall Jack Reacher onto the Allegiant Stadium crowds—much to everyone’s delight.
The giant Jack, done in honor of today’s Season 2 premiere of Reacher, involved making a clay mold of series star Alan Ritchson’s head; creating a 3D print of what would become the final sculpture; building a massive, hand-carved body made of foam that was wrapped in latex to give a plastic, action figure feel; and initiating partnerships between the Raiders, Thursday Night Football and Little Cinema, the vendor that worked on the piece.
The build took months to create, ultimately resulting in an enormous Jack Reacher that could break out of his massive toy box, pose for photo ops and throw a football to fans.
And it all begs one question: Why?
“Reacher Season 1 was a massive hit, and we’re thrilled for his return to Prime Video, so we wanted to do something very special,” Greg Coleman, global head of integrated marketing at Amazon, told Adweek.
“We’ve seen on social media these giant activations—kind of giant puppets—and we’ve got this amazing action star and Thursday Night Football, which delivers action in real life on Prime, so why not put these things together in a way that’s memorable, delights fans and it’s fun.”
It’s also big.
And with Ritchson’s own larger-than-life size (the actor is 6’3” and around 235 pounds) being one of the memorable and meme-able storylines coming out of Reacher Season 1, the activation also “made sense,” Coleman said.
In fact, as part of the event, Ritchson attended the game, posing next to the massive Jack Reacher action figure, which took the work of several puppeteers to bring to life.
