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How Reinhart made her mark
Lili Reinhart is most known for her role as Betty Cooper in Riverdale, based on Archie’s
Comics. Since then, Reinhart has been in a plethora of new projects, promoting them in unique
and successful ways. Most recently, Lili Reinhart has made waves with her press tour for the
movie The Love Hypothesis.
If you’ve been following Lili Reinhart on social media, you know she has a talent for
promoting her projects. It seems like every couple of months Reinhart has a new viral moment.
She has a history of making any public appearance a marketing opportunity and topic of
conversation. She promotes her skincare brand, a new TV show, or a new movie in the most
subtle, yet impactful ways. Reinhart gives her all in her press tours.
Lili Reinhart was promoting her movie Forbidden Fruits less than a year before she
completed her press tour for The Love Hypothesis. This movie had a small budget, so the
promotion had a small budget as well, but that did not stop Reinhart from making an immense
difference in the publicity the film got. Once again, every public appearance she made sparked
conversations everywhere. She brought back a sort of 2000s chic by wearing graphic crop-tees
with phrases on them. A few images of her wearing these t-shirts went viral for being
controversial and relatable. Following her amazing Y2K press tour of the horror-comedy
Forbidden Fruits, Reinhart got straight back to work a little over 6 months later with the Love
Hypothesis press tour.
With a larger budget, it’s amazing to see what Reinhart and others have been able to
accomplish on this press tour. She’s done dozens of interviews alone and accompanied by her
co-star, Tom Bateman. She has also taken to TikTok and had her costars make videos with her.
Still, Reinhart wasn’t done with the press there. Attempting to appeal to Gen Z, she appeared on
Brittany Broski’s “Royal Court,” the “In Your Dreams With Owen Thiele” podcast, “Hot Ones
Versus,” Vanity Fair’s Lie Detector Test, and many more videos that can be found on YouTube.
She also made guest appearances on talkshows, including The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy
Fallon, and The Drew Barrymore Show.
I’ve seen so many clips of her interviews on my feed, but perhaps her most effective—
and my favorite part of her PR campaign—are her fashion statements. The Love Hypothesis is a
romantic comedy based on a book of the same name. To honor this genre of movies, Reinhart
has been dedicating her outfits to specific characters in classic rom-coms. She has actually worn
some of these outfits in her interviews, adding to the conversation and allowing her to speak
about her intentions and strategy.
Reinhart wore a sleek yellow dress that paid homage to Kate Hudson who played Andie
Anderson in the beloved rom-com How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. This was her first look that
she dedicated a post to on Instagram and it accumulated over 4 million likes and almost 90k
shares. She was also seen wearing a stunning gown inspired by Drew Barrymore as Danielle de
Barbarac in Ever After: A Cinderella Story which I unfortunately have not seen, but still feel is
appropriate to mention nonetheless. Reinhart continued this trend of tributes by wearing a brown,
lace-trimmed dress inspired by Jenna Rink played by Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30. She
even wore the exact polka-dotted coat that Jennifer Garner wore in the movie. This reference was
even more fitting because she wore the outfit shortly after her own 30th birthday. A classic,
monochromatic lavender dress was up next in the wardrobe. This dress was a re-creation of the
dress Sandra Bullock wore as Gracie Hart wore in “Miss Congeniality.” Funny enough, she wore
this dress on “Hot Ones Versus,” which I feel is something Gracie Hart would totally do.
Though all of these looks were gorgeous, my favorite one was definitely when she paid
homage to the late Brittany Murphy. She wore the 2002 archival Blumarine dress that was
covered in flowers and glitter that Brittany Murphy wore as Molly Gunn in Uptown Girls. The
dress was vibrant and nostalgic, and the tribute was so tasteful that it had to be my favorite.
Reinhart has been getting comparisons to Brittany Murphy since the start of her career, so this
seemed like a perfect full circle moment to conclude this rather successful press tour.
As someone studying public relations, I am obsessed with what her PR team is doing for
this movie and I can only hope that more teams take note of this success and adopt some of the
same techniques. The iconic throwbacks are great news to fans young and old(er), and you can’t
talk about these references without mentioning her new movie. Genius. I mean, what’s a press
tour without fashion at the forefront? Rom-coms in my opinion are fundamentally important to
contributing to new fashion eras, and Lili Reinhart clearly understands this important detail.
Seeing any portion of this PR campaign will prompt you to talk about iconic rom-coms and their
even more iconic looks in the movies, boosting The Love Hypothesis in that conversation. Lili
Reinhart knows exactly who her target audience is and how to appeal to them. Reinhart and her
team had the power, understanding, and the strategy to turn what started as a press tour into a full
blown PR campaign, and an impressive one at that.