Take a walk down around Orchard Road and you’ll be bombarded by flesh-eating zombies, nefarious villains and hopeless romantics. The movie marketing and promotion industry today has boomed with the aid of technology enabling movie distributors to advertise on plasma screens on buildings. In this exhibition, be taken back in time to the good old days when cinema promoters used “lobby cards.“ In celebration of its 75th anniversary, Cathay Organisation, one of Singapore's leading leisure and entertainment groups, has rolled out the exhibition to show the evolution of movie marketing. “One of the most visible differences is that the technologies and the scale of marketing have changed. Marketing now involves social networks like Facebook, Twitter and blogs,“ says Lindy Poh, curator of the exhibition Box Office Hits: The Magic Of Movie Marketing that’s currently on at The Cathay Gallery.

Starting in the 20s, but used right through to the 50s, lobby cards were jumbo-sized stills captured from the films. They were produced in sets of eight and displayed in cinema foyers. These acted as the trailers or teasers. Together with Claire Low, Cathay’s resource archivist, and its marketing team, Poh trawled through Cathay’s vast and voluminous material to present artifacts like cinema trading cards from 1929, freebies, old posters, memorabilia, movie tie-ups (yes, they had those as early as 1965) as well as images of Cathay’s events from the past—from box advertisements on horse drawn carriages, to elaborate papier-mâché floats and costumed mascots.

Low further explains the differences between marketing movies then and now, “In terms of marketing through merchandise, the scale has altered since the 1970s. Films have tie-ups with toy manufacturers producing light sabers to lunchboxes. In the past, merchandise was much more modest. We had jigsaw puzzles, or collectible cards.“ Yet it's clear that even if efforts in the past were simple and austere, they were nonetheless impressively creative.

Box Office Hits: The Magic Of Movie Marketing is on through Dec 16 at The Cathay Gallery, #02-16, The Cathay, 2 Handy Rd., 6732-7332. Free.