'2012' "Roadblock" Promo Will Hijack Your TV on Oct. 1st

Ever flip through the channels during a commercial break only to find the same commercial on another network? It may seem like a coincidence, but it's actually called roadblock advertising. And I hope you're looking forward to Roland Emmerich's upcoming disaster-porn 2012, because Sony is throwing millions of dollars at all of the major networks in an attempt to be damn sure you see 2 minutes of the film on October 1st.

According to Variety, Sony's diabolical stunt plan is to have "the footage in front of 90% of all households watching ad-supported TV, or nearly 110 million viewers. When combined with online and mobile streams, that could increase to more than 140 million".

If that's not enough of an overdose on the Mayan-predicted-apocalypse loving film before it even opens this November 13th, Variety further explains that Comcast is actually going to be running a hype campaign announcing the roadblock campaign: "Comcast will launch a multi-million dollar promotional campaign on its cable networks and online to hype the roadblock, which will air on ABC, NBC and CBS, 89 cable networks, local stations in the top 70 markets, and Spanish-language networks throughout the U.S. between 10:50 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on the West and East coasts, with the hours varying across the rest of the country."


Yeppers, complete market saturation. Millions of dollars being spent on advertising to announce a second advertisement. Bold move, Sony, but will it be worth it? I have no idea, but I think Sony could have generated more 2012 word-of-mouth buzz had they not even made this grand show of things. Just plan the roadblock without all the marketing fanfare and then lean back grinning when 90% of households in the US are suddenly and inexplicably bombarded with an inescapable two minutes of the world being bombarded by meteors, tsunamis, and rolling buildings. The confused watercooler Twittering the day after would have been phenomenal success.