Advertising by Association

"Despite the explicit marketing tie-in ("From the studio that brought you Shrek"), both [Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas and Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron] are traditional hand-drawn cel animation with nothing to connect them to Shrek in look or in spirit."

— Steven D. Greydanus, Decent Films ^note Though, it does seem that every Dreamworks Animation film of the 21st Century carries this tagline; the film was the most successful thing to come out of Dreamworks, despite the studio's own hatred of it, and so people mistook it as coming from Pixar, the more successful animation studio of the time.

When a creator is maybe not prominent enough to carry a title on their own, but their work is popular and/or widely loved enough to mean something, the promoters of their latest project will highlight their track record to sell this new thing to people. Sometimes it does give the audience some clues as to what they might expect — a signature line, a Creator Cameo, other tropes said creator is known to utilize.

Can lead to Director Displacement in films and television when the "creator" is a producer — as this name immediately becomes associated with the work, people not bothered to look any further than promotional material will only know them as the creator of it and perpetuate both the displacement and the future of works being promoted by their name as they become more spoken of.

Sometimes may be used as a way to Polish the Turd.

May take the form of:

• From the writer/director/creator of...
• From the studio that brought you...
• From the producer of... - Some people take this as a sign that they had nothing else to sell the audience on.
• From the Award Winning creator of... - For when they really want to highlight the creator's prestige.
• From the maker/s of... - They did something important on that film, had a little involvement with this one.

Compare Billed Above the Title (where the Creator's name is displayed more prominently than the title of the work), He Also Did (for when the work is incredibly out of genre for the Creator, but it isn't necessarily advertised), If You Like "X-Files" (where products are advertised by their inclusion in a work), In Case You Forgot Who Wrote It (where the Creator's name is part of the title or Tagline), and Preview Piggybacking (where a work afvertises an included preview for a much more anticipated work).

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Examples:

Straight Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Funimation uses the "from the studio" variant in quite a few of its trailers, which is odd as it merely licenses and translates released works from a variety of companies.
• The newest release of Revolutionary Girl Utena announces on the box that it's from one of the creators of Sailor Moon: Kunihiko Ikuhara.

Films — Animation

• David Kirschner
  • Advertisements for the film Once Upon a Forest said it was "from the creator of An American Tail". This was possibly done to mislead people into thinking it was a Don Bluth film, which it wasn't; David Kirschner produced both films (and came up with the initial idea for An American Tail).
  • Some of the trailers for The Pagemaster also said "From the creator of An American Tail" at the beginning. It was also produced by Kirschner.
• Many second-rate CGI movies are often labelled as "from the producers of Shrek". That producer in question is John H. Williams, who also produced Valiant, Happily N'Ever After and Space Chimps.
• Coraline was promoted as "From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", leading many people believe that the movie is by Tim Burton. Actually, it's Henry Selick who directed both movies, and Burton was only the producer of The Nightmare Before Christmas and had no involvement in Coraline.
• DreamWorks Animation movies are often advertised this way, referencing previous DreamWorks All CGI Cartoons, Shrek being usually one of them.
• Ads for Pixar movies use the "From the studio that brought you..." version of this trope.
• Disney Animation Studios in its early years would advertise films as being "Walt Disney's Latest Picture", and in the decades after Walt's death would play up the brand in lieu of specific film association. Frozen was their first film to begin associating specific movies in its posters ("From the creators of Tangled and Wreck-It Ralph") and Big Hero 6 began Disney's habit of association in the actual trailers ("From the creators of Wreck-It Ralph and Frozen").
• Played for laughs in the first trailer for The LEGO Batman Movie, where the trailer lists every live-action Batman movie ever made (by Warner Bros., anyway)... and The LEGO Movie.
• Adverts for Chicken Run said it was "from the creators of Wallace & Gromit".

Films — Live-Action

• Edgar Wright
  • Sightseers is "From the makers of Hot Fuzz, Paul & Shaun of the Dead". Of course, Wright only produced this film, not wrote and directed it. Note that The World's End isn't on that list because, though complete, hadn't been released yet and that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World isn't because the film was targeted at British audiences, the genre of the film is much more like the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy, Rule of Three, and the marketing department may have wanted to noncommittally suggest that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost would be in it.
  • The DVD case of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World also reminds you that it's "from the director of Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz".
• The tagline poster for Mama says that it's "Presented by Guillermo del Toro, Creator of Pan's Labyrinth". What they mean by that is that del Toro is only the Executive Producer.
• Advertisements for The Interview said it was "From the Western capitalist pigs who brought you Neighbors and This Is the End".
• John Landis. The poster for An American Werewolf in London proclaimed "From the director of Animal House...A different kind of animal."
• Battleship was proudly declared as coming "From Hasbro, the company that brought you Transformers", in spite of neither film being actually made by the same studio (note:Hasbro's film division at the time just developed the concepts for other studios. Also, they didn't create the original Battleship game, they just bought out the owners).
• When the movie remake of ''Land of the Lost'' came out in 2009, Universal Studios released the 1970 movie adaptation of H.R. Pufnstuf, on DVD, which contained a blurb on top of the front cover stating, "From the Producers of Land of the Lost" (Even though Sid & Marty Krofft completely created both series).
• Pirates of the Caribbean
  • The reboot of The Lone Ranger had trailers boasting that it was from producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Gore Verbinski, the people behind Pirates of the Caribbean. But instead of stating that outright, they just show the Pirates logo.
  • Trailers for King Arthur said "From Jerry Bruckheimer, the producer of Pirates of the Caribbean".
• The new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014) put Michael Bay as the most prominent name in the marketing, despite being only one of a half dozen producers, because his name was also the most notable.
• The film Child 44 is being promoted as having been produced by Ridley Scott.
• The 2015 Fantastic Four film's trailer and poster promote "From the studio that brought you X-Men: Days of Future Past", despite sharing none of the same directors, producers, writers, etc.
• For that matter, it's pretty common for Marvel Studios movies to have the tag line "From the studio that brought you The Avengers".
• The 2015 film Jem and the Holograms says in the trailer that it's "From the studio^note Acting here solely as distributor that brought you Pitch Perfect and the director of Never Say Never."
• Top Secret! is "From the makers of the original Airplane!", followed by a footnote stating "(Not the Wright Brothers)".
• Hilariously, the DVD cases of Django — the original from the 1960s — have the director's name in tiny font, but say "The film that inspired Quentin Tarantino" — for unrelated Django Unchained — in massive letters, given how successful he and that film are now.
• The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure had the possibly-unique "from the marketing visionary who brought you Teletubbies". The movie currently holds the record for worst box office returns for a widely released movie.
• The first trailer for A New Hope said "20th Century Fox and George Lucas, the man who brought you American Graffiti now bring you...
• The trailer for Truth or Dare advertises the film as being "From the producer of Get Out, The Purge and Happy Death Day".
• The trailer and poster for The Darkest Minds advertise the film as being from the producers of Stranger Things and Arrival.

Literature

• Fred Saberhagen wrote the Novelization of the film Bram Stoker's Dracula. He offered to also write the novelization of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein just so the cover could say "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein: by the author of Bram Stoker's Dracula."
• Exceedingly common in literature, with the cover frequently advertising something akin to "from the New York Times bestselling author of Insert Book Here." Other common promotions include "by the bestselling author of the book that was made into a successful movie" or even "by the author of the bestselling franchise, of which this book is the next installment".
• The two series Seekers and Survivors are advertised as "From the author of the #1 nationally bestselling Warriors series" right on the covers. For Survivors, fans consider this rather misleading: while Warriors and Seekers have shared the same group of writers and editors under the pen name Erin Hunter for a decade, Survivors has an entirely new team and isn't connected to any of the people responsible for the other two series.
• John Norman's non-Gor novels have the blurb by the author of the Gor novels on the cover, where the Gor books say "the Xth book in the Counter-Earth saga."
• At least two books by renowned children's author Syd Hoff — "Julius" and "Sammy the Seal" — had the line "(By the) author of Danny and the Dinosaur" somewhere on the cover of some editions.
• The novelization of Hook by Terry Brooks proudly advertised on the top of the cover, "From the Bestselling Author of The Druid of Shannara". The first printing even had the Druid title in BOLD ALL-CAPS and almost as large as the actual Hook title; subsequent printings shrunk the blurb down to just the top edge of the cover.
• On the cover to The Wizards Of Once just above the author's name (Cressida Cowell) is the line — "From the Author of How to Train Your Dragon".

Live-Action TV

• FOX's summer 2015 game show BOOM! is being advertised as "from the creators of Wipeout."
• Ryan Murphy's Scream Queens is "from the creators of Glee and American Horror Story." All three do share the same crew, nearly in its entirety, as well as a mix of the casts of both shows.
• Oobi was advertised as featuring "furless" Muppets due to its vast amount of connections to Sesame Street.
• Early promos for The WB's Unhappily Ever After said that "The creator of Married... with Children picks up where marriage leaves off."

Music

• News articles about I AM I's lead singer, ZP Theart, tend to introduce him as DragonForce's ex-singer.
• Recent no-man albums tend to include a sticker that says: "no-man are: steven wilson (porcupine tree) and tim bowness". Which is ironic considering that Wilson considers no-man his main project.

Tabletop Games

• Card games published by International Games Inc. and Mattel all have the inset "From the Makers of UNO" on the game's box. This includes Uno's sequel, Dos.

Toys

• The packaging of the first wave of Hero Factory sets had a label boasting "From the makers of BIONICLE!"
• The Grossery Gang have labels on the top of their pegs with "From the makers of The Trash Pack!" on them. Before their official release, both The Trash Pack and Shopkins YouTube channels aired crossover promotions for The Grossery Gang.

Video Games

• Rage's box points out that it's "from the creators of Doom and Quake".
• Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure was originally promoted with this caption: "By the Oliver Twins, authors of Grand Prix Simulator!"

Web Original

• Brand Sins is advertised as being "from the a**holes that brought you CinemaSins".
• Dr. Havoc's Diary Is advertised as "from the guys who brought you The Most Popular Girls in School".

Western Animation

• When Danny Phantom got its first promo, the creators of Fairly Oddparents were mentioned.
• This was this reason that Father of the Pride caught the ire of the Parents Television Council; ads for the show cited its studio as the creators of Shrek, which they felt would mislead kid/family audiences into watching a show that was most decidedly not aimed at such.
• The promos for Milo Murphy's Law say it's "from the team that brought you Phineas and Ferb".

Parodies:

Fan Works

• The first paragraph of Super Paper Mario X starts with a "Creator of" example, like a trailer for a movie, but a Record Needle Scratch occurs halfway through, with the author assuring that "this is not a movie."

Films — Animation

• Parodied by the 2007 Spanish-Italian animated film Donkey Xote. The film had a lot of similarities with Shrek, bordering on plagiarism. Its creators lampshaded this, promoting the film as "From the producers who saw Shrek".

Films — Live-Action

• Seltzer and Friedberg advertised Date Movie, among others, as produced by "two of the six writers of Scary Movie."
• The trailer for Dudley Do-Right: "From the creator of George of the Jungle, and the star of George of the Jungle, and the acclaimed director who saw George of the Jungle.
• A trailer for Deadpool 2 advertises it as "from the studio that brought you 27 Dresses and The Devil Wears Prada" - i.e. films that are very much the opposite of a action superhero comedy.
  • The second trailer takes things further by adding "from the studio that killed Wolverine.
• Mad Max: Fury Road advertising used the director's name only, as he didn't really have any similar films with which to draw favorable comparisons. Fans, on the other hand, were happy to point out that the movie about Australian madmen driving the awesomest weaponized cars this side of Gorkamorka was "From the director of Happy Feet and Babe."

Live-Action TV

• Not Necessarily the News once ran a clip of fireworks set to orchestral music while an announcer delivered a bombastic introduction one word at a time. "From! The makers! Of! Police! Academy! 2! Comes!" Cut to an all black screen, music stops. "Nothing of importance."

Web Animation

• Homestar Runner: The Peasant's Quest preview advertises it as being "from the company that made that game Trogdor, and that game Rabbit Algebra". (Trogdor was already a playable game on the website, but Rabbit Algebra was made up as a joke just for this trailer and was never playable.)
• In How It Should Have Ended's Man of Steel Superhero Cafe short, Batman points out how prominently Christopher Nolan's name was in the trailer, especially since this is the only reason they really list producers. Superman insists that's not why people are excited.

Web Original

• The Screen Junkines Honest Trailers will frequently lampoon this.
  • Examples include describing The Lord of the Rings trilogy as "From the director of the King Kong Universal Studios ride", or Prometheus as "From the director of all those Russell Crowe movies you never saw, and the writer of Lost's unsatisfying final episode".
  • M. Night Shyamalan. After Earth is "From the director of... Oh God, not him again."
• During the Midnight Screenings of The Avengers, while joking about how Battleship flaunts "From the company that brought you Transformers", they come up with a better tagline: "From the language that brought you Hamlet".

Western Animation

• The Futurama episode "Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love?" parodies this by having its opening caption read "From the Network that Brought You The Simpsons." (They could have made a big deal out of Matt Groening's name being on the cover of both shows, but they offer their then-shared home on Fox as the key similarity instead.)
• Parodied in Family Guy, in an unaired cutaway gag from season 9, "Road to the North Pole".
  Stewie: [to Brian] You tried to trick me! Like those commercials for upcoming movies.
  [cut to Stewie watching TV in the living room]
  Announcer: This summer, from the guys who brought you Superbad comes a hilarious new comedy.
  Stewie: Uh, I hate when they do that. Which guy? You know it could be the writers or the guys in the wardrobe department, they don't specify.
  [Stewie changes the channel]
  Announcer: From the studio that brought you Wedding Crashers.
  Stewie: Uh, who cares? It's sure a broad association.
  [Stewie changes the channel]
  Announcer: From the species that brought you Talladega Nights.
  Stewie: Oh what, humans? Who else is making movies?
  Announcer: From the same molecular elements that brought you Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
  Stewie: What?
  Announcer: ...and air!
  Stewie: Fuck off!
• Parodied in the "Uncle Grandpa Babies" segment with "From the network that brought you Adventure Time and Steven Universe."

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