Discuss: Movie Marketing Gone Wild!
Filed under: Fandom, Movie Marketing
So who watched South Park the other night? In the episode, internet goes down and the citizens of South Park (as well as other places throughout the country) are forced to live their lives without online access. Of course, in true South Park fashion, everyone winds up in an internet camp, sleeping on cots -- all dirty and disheveled -- as they fight over the 40 seconds of internet each person gets per day. Not only was it hysterical to watch, but it also opened my eyes to the fact that it's becoming difficult to remember how things were prior to the internet, especially for people 30 years of age and younger.
It's almost hard to imagine those days when we wouldn't find out a certain movie existed until the trailer played in a theater, or during the Super Bowl. Now we get teaser posters before the film even goes into production. Remember when a movie only got one poster? To date, we've seen 10, 11 Iron Man posters alone. Posters! As movie marketing has moved online, everything's grown larger -- more trailers, more images, more games, more contests. Now there are entire websites devoted to one movie's viral marketing campaign. It's pretty insane, and even though I do this for a living, it's still real hard for me to keep up with it all. (I'm still waiting for the day when a particular viral campaign is blamed for the unfortunate death of a teenager. C'mon, you know it's gonna happen eventually ...)
But when is it too much? When does movie marketing cross the line from teasing a product to handing it to you, in pieces, over the course of several months. When are people satisfied? We complain that we got one trailer for Incredible Hulk, and we complain when we get 75 trailers for Iron Man. Are there any films running a perfect marketing campaign so far? Sound off below ...
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
4-18-2008 @ 1:02PM
ProgGrrl said...
I wish this new, still sort of magical, form of marketing could be used more to benefit the smaller fish in the seas. I've had way more Iron Man and Dark Knight info than I will ever need...but I could use some more net news about the latest microindies, online series, indy films, etc etc. Even the studios smaller releases.
Spread the love, is all I'm saying. And I am not inferring that you guys don't already cover a wide spectrum. I think the root issue is that the indies don't have the staff/budget to work the 'net as long and hard as the huge studio staff can.
Demanding, engaged audience (and the press) need to drive diversity for marketing. "User generated marketing"?
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