The marketing team at Screen Gems made headlines this week with their unorthodox promotion of the thriller Prom Night (which opens this Friday).

The company had movie theatre employees jump out of cardboard displays toting the film, and provided a jarring - and probably not soon forgotten - experience to cinema patrons. Whether or not the ad technique draws more people to see Prom Night can't be determined in any concrete way. But one thing is for sure: the displays will have people leaving the theatre talking about the film.

It's no secret that with the growing marketing power of the web, traditional theatrical posters and cardboard displays probably aren't going to cut it anymore. Filmgoers are making their decisions more and more based on the content they discover while sitting online and traditional marketers that work in the "real world" are going to have to engage them on a different level.

"The web has completely changed the way that movies are marketed. The audiences are smarter and more savvy and they appreciate when you treat them that way. They like to be a part of the game" Marc Weinstock, President of Marketing for Screen Gems told Boxoffice in an e-mail.

Also recently making headlines are the non-traditional marketing techniques behind The Dark Knight. Considering that Knight comes with a built-in audience, it says a lot that Warner Bros. still feels the need to push the film in new and creative ways.

Yet while many smaller studios don't have the kind of marketing cash to play with that Warner Bros. does, being limited financially may result in more creative ideas.

Weinstock says the funnest part of the process is "Thinking of out-of-the-box ideas that are creative and innovative. We don't have enormous budgets so we have to think of unique ways to get our message across."