The Brilliant Branding of "Anora"

In today’s episode of "Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe", we will talk about some fun facts about the making of my favorite film of the year, "Anora", plus the marketing strategies behind the scenes. Then in the second half of the episode, exclusively for paying coconuts of the best-selling Substack, we are going to talk about my thoughts on the specific branding. My theory of this whole episode is that they created a popular movie by refusing to be popular. And we will talk about how you can do something similar whether you are an artist, creator or brand owner.

Sean Baker and Mikey Madison were a dream team together for this underdog film but their marketing team was the secret third man who helped push the movie across the finish line at the Oscar's.

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Time Stamps + Topics:

0:00 - Introduction/Oscar’s wins for “Anora”

6:14 - 5 BTS Facts About the Making of “Anora”

12:37 - The $18 million marketing budget

16:41 - “Anora” box-office sales compared to other Oscar 2025 contenders

Extended Episode at cocomocoe.substack.com

23:21 - Traditional marketing campaign (Barbie) vs. Anora’s marketing campaign

33:40 - The targeting of a specific Gen-Z audience

42:25 - A creator example of the “Anora” strategy

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Let me know in the reviews on Apple and Spotify what you want the next episode of "The Brilliant Branding of _____" to be about plus any theories you might have.

Listen to last week's episode about "The Brilliant Branding of Tate McRae"

“⁠Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe⁠” is a marketing podcast that covers internet and pop culture but from a branding angle. Coco Mocoe is a trend forecaster and marketing expert who loves diving deep into why things go viral on the internet and how you can apply that to your own brand or creator journey.

IG: ⁠@cocomocoe⁠

TT: ⁠@cocomocoe⁠

YT:⁠ coco mocoe⁠

Email: cocomocoe@gmail.com

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Transcript ⬇️

Did you know that Sean Baker, the director of “Anora”, won more awards at the 2025 Oscar’s on one night than legendary directors Christopher Nolan, Steven Spielberg and Quentin Tarantino have won in their entire careers? He won 5 Oscar’s for Anora whereas those three directors have won between 2-3 awards each.

Sean Baker, a relatively unknown director to the masses, was only known by film buffs for his fringe but beloved movies like “Tangerine” and “The Florida Project” prior to Sunday, March 2nd, 2025. Sean Baker’s name became a breakout search on Google March 2nd and 3rd of this year. Mikey Madison, the breakout lead of “Anora” also became a household name that same night. Prior to the Oscar’s, “Anora” was almost entirely snubbed in the award circuit. Losing out to gore-horror film, “The Substance”. “Conclave” was thought to sweep at the Oscar’s this year after a strong award season run. And it was the type of film that the Academy loves to vote for. A somewhat historically adjacent movie with strong religious or cultural undercurrents moving a plot forward. But instead, it was upset by a movie about a stripper in Brooklyn who fell in love with a Russian oligarch’s son. So how did it happen?

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Now, I have to say coconuts. I called it. Once again. I was on fire this awards season. I predicted 6 out of the 7 main grammy categories the morning before the award show aired. And despite “Anora” being snubbed through out the award season, I posted a video to TikTok and Reels the morning of the Oscar’s practicing my dance to the theme song of the movie for when the film came out on top.

In today’s episode, of “the brilliant branding” we are going to talk about “the brilliant branding of Anora”. I planned to make an episode about this, regardless, but in the last few days more information has come out about the insane marketing spend of this relatively small, indie film. Or maybe that is what they wanted us to think the movie was. Because as I always say, America loves an underdog. And if you can position yourself as an underdog, you win. And that is what they brilliantly did with Anora.

In today’s episode of “Ahead of the Curve with Coco Mocoe”, we will talk about some fun facts about the making of my favorite film of the year. I went to see it three times in theaters because I can’t just like something moderately. I have to dive in and become obsessed. And then we are going to talk about some of the budgeting behind the Anora film that is trending online. Then in the second half of the episode, exclusively for paying coconuts of the best-selling substack, we are going to talk about my thoughts on the specific branding. Why it was so brilliant. My theory of this whole episode is that they created a popular movie by refusing to be popular. And we will talk about how you can do something similar whether you are an artist, creator or brand owner.

Thank you so much for tuning in week after week and helping this show grow to new heights! The numbers on Substack keep going up and up and I don’t know why or how but I am so grateful. The paying subscribers make it possible for me to continue this show without running any ads that you might hear on every other podcast every 5 minutes. I think that is part of the growth so thank you. Part of the growth is the reviews on apple and spotify, as well. Let me know what you think of the new brilliant branding series I am doing in the reviews and let me know what other artists, brands or creators you would want an episode on. Next week I plan to do an episode on Rhode Beauty. Cus it is crazy if you think about how Hailey Bieber was the victim of what I believe was a similar astro-turfing campaign to what Blake Lively is experiencing now and has been documented in legal documents. Bieber got insane amounts of hate in 2022 or 2023 I believe. I remember one of my first episodes of this podcast was about that and no matter how much research I did, none of the hate really made sense to me. If I was her, I don’t think I would still be alive. The online videos about her were insane. So to see 2 years later, she has one of the top selling beauty brands of 2024 is insane. Good for her! I think her marketing is brilliant and I will talk about that in next week’s episode.

So if you love these brilliant branding episodes, let me know and raise your hand in the reviews to let me know who else you would like to see covered. 🤚

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BTS Fun Facts About “Anora”

If you are watching this episode, I assume you are somewhat familiar with the film. But a quick TLDR for anyone who isn’t, it follows a stripper who meets a Russian oligarch’s son. They are both in their early 20’s. They get married in Vegas drunkenly one night. She thinks it is love. He seems to do it just for the plot and because he is impulsive. They then deal with the fall out of his angry, Russian parents heading to the States to force Anora, or Ani as they call her, to annul the marriage because of the shame that would come from the public in Russia finding out this high-profile family’s son married a stripper.

Here are the 5 fun facts:

1. The movie came about after Sean Baker, the relatively unknown director at the time, saw Mikey Madison as a side character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” and “Scream”, according to an interview with Fandango. In Quentin Tarantino’s film, OUATH, she played a Manson follower who only showed up in the last few minutes of the film. In it, she gets killed via flamethrower by Leonardo DiCaprio’s character. He watched the movie two more times just to see her performance. Along with this movie, she appeared in Scream as a side-villain, too. Sean Baker and his wife and co-producer, Samantha Quan, decided to cast Mikey Madison as the lead in their upcoming project Anora after watching her in Scream. They called her rep as soon as they left the movie theater.

   

They set up a coffee date where he pitched her this long-shot movie, “Anora”, that was only a loose idea at the time. I love this anecdote because you never know who is watching. Your side video that only got 10,000 views on TikTok could be the one that leads to an email in your inbox that changes your life. Some friends I have met and clients I have worked with in this industry, found me because of a TikTok video that didn’t even reach 100,000 views.

2. Mikey Madison learned Russian and Yura Borisov learned English. Mikey Madison told Q with Tom Power that learning Russian felt important to her character. The broken languages that they speak to each other is a part of the plot points and truly felt organic. I think the broken english and russian made the film and dialogue feel more organic than if they truly knew nothing of each language and was reciting it off a script or someone was reading them the lines for each scene. I do think the commitment to learning another language is the type of thing the academy eats upppppp. Don’t be surprised if you see a bunch of actors next year talking about how they learned new languages for their respective movies as they campaign for nominations. Me with my 365 day streak on Duolingo learning the irish language. Bhí sé deacair.

   

3. The home invasion scene in the middle of the film that had a run-time of 28 minutes took 7-8 days to shoot. Mikey Madison told EW that she didn’t have a stunt double and wanted to do all of her own stunts. She said it was important for her playing the character to actually go through those motions and know what it feels like. Her character gets tied up, gagged, breaks lamps and statues, punches and kicks the Russian’s henchman and more. I was most fascinated with how they were able to film this constantly moving fight scene with out capturing the camera crew in the many wall-length mirrors around this modern but soulless house. I also wonder if it took over a week to film because they broke so much furniture during the fights that they needed to replace them each day. They probably had replicas ready to go but it would’ve been a big clean up and set up over and over again.

   

4. Mikey learned the specific Brighton Beach accent. Mikey’s character, Anora, is from Brighton Beach in Brooklyn. This is a Russian-immigrant part of the city with a specific accent. Not only did she work with an accent coach, but she spent weeks living there before they began filming to socialize with locals and perfect the way they spoke. Again, this is another type of thing the academy eats up. They want you to be so committed.

5. This is the fifth film of the up-and-coming production company, Neon, to win the Palm d’Orr at Canne Film Festival. Neon is a smaller production company that is now eclipsing the likes of A24 in terms of awards and buzz. The last five Neon films to win have been “Parasite”, “Titane”, “Triangle of Sadness”, “Anatomy of a Fall” and now “Anora”. I would give anything to work with Neon one day as a creator! Ugh, one can dream.

   

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This leads me to the marketing budget Neon spent on Anora:

It made waves online when it came out that this relatively indie film, Anora, spent three times it’s production budget on marketing. This low key makes me excited because it reminds me of the importance of marketing and what we do. I always fear that marketing isn’t important but then I remember that it might feel like marketing isn’t important because the job of marketing is to be invisible. There is a reason there is no category at the Oscar’s, Emmy’s or Grammy’s for “best marketer”. The best marketing doesn’t leave a single fingerprint at the crime scene. The best marketing appears that it didn’t even happen at all and the hype was all organic.

Tom Quinn, the CEO of Neon, talked about the marketing campaign behind Anora in a new Variety interview. He stated that they never pander to the campaign aka the Academy voters. Instead, the focus on the, “film, filmmaker and audience – in that order”. Variety notes that this Oscar win for best picture for the relatively small production company, Neon, beats out juggernauts like Disney and Netflix who have never won the coveted award, let alone twice. For comparison, the Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” movie had a marketing budget of $200 million. The marketing budget for “Wicked” was $150 million and that is only part one of the movie. We aren’t even halfway through. We can estimate the total marketing spend for “Wicked” will be $300 million or more by the time the second part comes out in November of this year. The “Barbie” marketing budget was $150 million, as well.

Variety reports that one competing film spent up to $60 million on their marketing budget for the award season alone. They don’t say what movie that is for but I assume it might be “Emilia Perez”. Tom Quinn states that they spent $18 million. This is of course a lot of money but it does not even hold a candle to the bigger media companies around who spent three to eight times what they did. Quinn states that the overall film budget was $6 million. Meaning the marketing, alone, was three times the actual cost of the movie.

David Thion, the producer of “Anatomy of a Fall”, told Variety that Quinn is scrappy when it comes to marketing. It was Quinn who had the idea to highlight the dog in the film as an integral part of the film. One that led to the movie being nominated for “Best Picture” at the Oscar’s last year.

The article mentions the relatively low box office sales for a movie that won Best Picture. It grossed $16-million domestically and $41-million internationally. But Quinn isn’t letting that phase him. He said the box office isn’t the only revenue source and marker of success for a film. The movie is currently number one on streaming for Amazon Prime and Apple. The movie will most likely continue to be a sleeper hit, especially after the record-breaking awards. Famously, “Fight Club” bombed at the box office, seeing a major drop in second weekend sales. The movie was so poorly received at their premiere that critics left the movie theater. Now, “Fight Club” is considered a cult classic and is the most reviewed movie of all-time on Letterbox

“Anora” almost didn’t happen, too. In 2023, Neon almost sold to a billionaire-industrialist, Steven Rales, but fell through in the eleventh hour. Some thought this meant Neon, like many other indie film startups, would shutter it’s doors and close for good.

But they preserved and kept going despite this major setback. They focused on the art, not the profits or the popularity. When you focus only on profit or popularity, you often fall short at making a genuinely good product. You only become an extreme version of whatever is popular at the time, and as I always say: the opposite of trendy is timeless.

While there is nothing wrong with being popular or profitable, I do think those things must happen organically. They must happen, not because you aimed for it, but because you focused on making the best possible product you could. Chasing trends and popularity is a short-term strategy.

But “Anora” followed the formula of, “the nicher you go, the quicker you grow”. And you can too. I will talk in detail about “Anora’s” 18-million-dollar campaign, what specifically they did, and how you can apply these strategies to your growth, whether you are a creator with 100 followers, 100,000 followers or 1,000,000 followers.

You can listen to the second half of this episode exclusively at cocomocoe.substack.com for $9-a-month. You get access to every Friday Trend Report and you can binge the full-length episodes of this podcast. I always save the best bits and knowledge for the paying coconuts so be sure to tune in, if you can hear me talk about this topic even longer.

And if not, thank you so much regardless for making it this far. I appreciate you for tuning into my podcast every week and I hope it brings you wisdom and comfort because being a creator is scary. Thanks y’all! Paying coconuts, I’ll see you on the other side.