Scarcity as Strategy: The Odyssey in IMAX, Norwegian vikings & Harvard’s F*** AI Speech

Sonia sits down with Dino Delic, head of data driven communications research lab at Meltwater, to break down Christopher Nolan's Odyssey IMAX strategy, World Cup brand activations, and Ronnie Cheng's viral Harvard commencement speech telling graduates to destroy AI. The big thesis: scarcity is a strategy, and the brands that engineer demand without oversaturating win the monoculture moment. Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey isn't just the most anticipated film of the summer. It's running one of the most strategically layered marketing campaigns in years. The movie opens July 17th, and the campaign has three pieces that point back to the same argument: scarcity drives demand. IMAX presale tickets sold out instantly, the AMC app crashed multiple times, and Universal and IMAX stayed quiet. This is the first time movie tickets are getting scalped like concert tickets, with resellers charging thousands of dollars. The format assignments for different films had Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Tom Holland come out to do adverts for all the different formats. The interactive website lets you compare IMAX versus standard aspect ratios side by side. They threw in the Trojan horse popcorn bucket, selling an IMAX camera along with it. Letterboxd announced they're now letting you designate which format you watched the movie in, giving cinephiles social proof of how they watched the movie. This is the first film ever shot entirely on an IMAX camera. The lesson: they knew demand would be high, supply would be low, and the crash would create more buzz. Norway's World Cup campaign is brilliant. They took a photo dressed up like Vikings. The Norwegian Football Federation saw a fan moment that went viral: fans in the stands started doing synchronized Viking rowing chants against Sweden. Coca-Cola signed a deal with Jose Mourinho for his AI likeness. Ronnie Cheng gave a Harvard commencement speech where he dropped F bombs and told graduates to destroy AI. He made jokes about how people brag about using AI to write emails, and said any human being can write emails really well. He brought it up as a generational thing and said the mission of your generation is to destroy AI. He is for AI pioneering breakthroughs in science, medicine, physics, but he's against it in terms of creating art, conversational writing. The lesson: if you use AI, talk about your experience using AI in a way that helps people do their jobs. It would remove how much people are associating it taking over people's jobs. We're talking about: Christopher Nolan's Odyssey IMAX strategy Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, and Tom Holland did ads for different formats, interactive website comparing IMAX versus standard aspect ratios Trojan horse popcorn bucket, IMAX camera bucket, Letterboxd letting you designate which format you watched the movie in Norway's World Cup campaign: David Yarrow photographing the team dressed as Vikings, building on fan Viking rowing chants, and why paying attention to your community gives you the best marketing ideas Coca-Cola signing a deal with Jose Mourinho for his AI likeness to create 200 plus pieces of reactive content Ronnie Chiang's Harvard commencement speech telling graduates to destroy AI, news media coverage negative, Reddit positive The animator who won a prize to work with Amazon using AI, got pilloried, quit and apologized, and why he didn't explain how AI was going to help Why your job is helping your boss make better outcomes, not producing outputs Plus: Why the premium on judgment is going up as the cost of competence goes down, and how to use AI to focus on the creative stuff Timestamps 00:00 Christopher Nolan's Odyssey IMAX strategy and scarcity as demand 25:00 Norway's World Cup Viking campaign and paying attention to your community 40:00 2026 FIFA World Cup brand activations and Coca-Cola's AI deal with Jose Mourinho 55:00 Ronnie Cheng's Harvard commencement speech and the animator Amazon controversy