‘Rio 2’ Celebrates Valentine’s Day with New Poster & Telenovela-inspired Ad

Blue Sky Studios is capitalizing on romantic notion of Brazilian romance in two new marketing pieces for Rio 2, including a Valentine’s Day movie poster and a telenovela-inspired clip.

The new poster is characteristic of what a lot of movies and brands are doing nowadays: capitalizing on any and every holiday by tying it back to their product (sometimes it’s quite a stretch). In this case, Rio 2 fits the romance bill nicely, since the first film was about the unlikely romance between two nearly extinct blue macaws. The flock of red birds forming a heart in the sky is clever and fun, while still remaining on brand.

The new telenovela clip is also a cute marketing move. From the other trailers, we already knew that the pink frog Gabi is hopelessly enamored with the grumpy and vengeful cockatoo Nigel. This clip dramatizes that forbidden love in a clip in a way that only telenovelas do best. The clip is even in Portuguese (a very sultry, manly Portuguese voice at a that) and employs subtitles to make it even more believable.

Yahoo! Movies also has another spot called “Wild Run”, which has a similar premise and over-the-top telenovela-esque announcer, but this one’s in English.

Rio 2 flies into theatres April 11, 2014.

What do you think of these Valentine’s-inspired promotional pieces for ‘Rio 2’? Thumbs up or thumbs down?