Open Forum Friday: Are You Sick of Viral Marketing Yet?
So now that the Cloverfield buzz is starting to die down and the box office numbers are fading, we are left wondering what kind of impact the success of this movie will have on the film industry. Yes, studios are now willing to give J.J. Abrams just about anything he wants, no question asked. Yes, we are seeing a new wave of handheld, documentary-style horror movies (Paranormal Activity is the latest one, just picked up at Slamdance). Perhaps the most noticeable influence of all, however, is the sudden rise in viral marketing to promote movies.
I’ll be the first to say that the viral marketing for Cloverfield was brilliant and greatly enhanced the overall experience of the movie. I also really enjoyed reading about how Trent Reznor used it to market his latest Nine Inch Nails album. But now that they’ve got viral marketing campaigns for major franchises like The Dark Knight and Star Trek, I’m thinking that the effectiveness of this interactive form of advertising may have already peaked. It’s no longer fresh and exciting. The upcoming thriller Vantage Point is launching a viral campaign of its own (since Lost star Matthew Fox is in it, I guess they’re trying to woo the J.J. Abrams crowd) and all I can think is, “Who cares?”
Surely it can’t just be me. What seemed just last year like a new, cutting edge way of reaching out to the media-saturated younger demographic, is now losing its appeal. It feels phony to me that the marketing folks at Warner Brothers ripped off Trent Reznor’s idea and sent out Joker cakes with cell phones inside. What do you think? Is this type of advertising still interesting, or are you getting sick of it? Can viral marketing save a mediocre movie? Will anyone ever top the Cloverfield campaign? Give us your thoughts here on Open Forum Friday.
Comments (11)
I think it depends on the quality of the advertising campaign. I think the advertising for The Dark Knight has been exceptional. I was already excited about this movie but since the posters and websites have sprung up I’m totally pumped for this film. The posters are some of the best I’ve seen for any movie. Any of those posters would look cool on a bedroom wall. So, if studios orchestrate a good campaign I won’t mind at all.
Posted by Stepen on February 1st, 2008Yeah, I think it depends on how the campaign is run. Obviously something of the caliber of “Cloverfield” or “The Dark Knight” is the height of what viral marketing can be. But, if every shitty movie that comes out tries to recreate that, it’ll lose some of its appeal.
Posted by Jon Rocks on February 1st, 2008I don’t think I was ever particularly interested in Viral Marketing. I didn’t pay attention to any of the advertisements for Cloverfield aside from the trailers and commercials. I also haven’t sent in a picture of myself with Joker make-up on for The Dark Knight viral site. If Viral Marketing is on the way out, then it completely passed me by. I could care less.
Posted by Rian on February 1st, 2008I’m starting to look at the extra Cloverfield multimedia less and less like viral marketing and more like part of the whole story.
I don’t think it’s there just to market and support the movie as it is there to be another piece of the whole puzzle.
Posted by scoville on February 1st, 2008I may not give a shit about viral marketing, but hopefully movie studios will do more things like this:
http://www.wordpress.tokyotimes.org/?p=2001
Posted by Henrik on February 1st, 2008The Waterscreen thing is cool. Indeed.
Viral Marketing isn’t all that new. I remember back in 1992 when they began the Bram Stoker’s Dracula advertising by putting these interesting looking sculptures and posters up all over Toronto without any titles. Just a date. Sure it predates the internet digging elements like Cloverfield, A.I. and Blair Witch, but it is the same basic concept. Get people talking about the mystery and hopefully it holds up long enough to get people to turn out for the film.
Advertising in any form is only as good as it is on a case by case basis. Comercials, Posters, Radio spots, websites or you-tube styled viral videos (anyone catch the hilarious Be Kind Rewind ’sweded’ trailer from Gondry?) are only as good as the brains behind them.
In general they only hit a small percentage of the public too. The trick is finding the right people interested to connect this to the mainstream. Something like Batman is a complete waste of time because the audience is totally built in. I think this would be Warners just experimenting with the form for smaller movies. Batman is a guaranteed success at this point.
Posted by kurt on February 2nd, 2008I liked the marketing for Cloverfield. Most marketing campaigns give away the whole movie before it’s even released. Cloverfield sold the movie on the memorable image of the decapitated Statue Of Liberty. There was a sense of mystery about the movie that made if feel special.
Posted by Rusty James on February 2nd, 2008I agree with what Stepen said. It completely depends upon how well the movie is advertised to us. I hated the Snakes On A Plane marketing and I thought the film was rubbish. But with films like Cloverfield and The Dark Knight finding new ways to tap into every market possible I am not going to be bored in the distant future.
However if this continues and every new film that comes out is viral marketed to death then it could get irritating. It entirely depends upon what each film decides to do. The marketing for Cloverfield was insanely good but if it is constantly copied then I will start to get sick of viral marketing.
Posted by CastleKnight on February 2nd, 2008If it’s marketing then I don’t care and even enjoy some of the more creative things. My problem is when the content of the piece (an album of music, a movie) almost requires all of this peripheral information in order to fully understand and in some cases apprecaite the work. I’m old school, I buy a CD I want to get it sans the 6 websites and cryptography degree. I go see a movie I don’t want to be confused because I didn’t read the graphic novel prequel.
Posted by Ian on February 2nd, 2008Not at all. I remember back in the “early days” of the web when I was living in NYC in 1998, I kept seeing these little signs on telephone poles with a domain name on them. I don’t remember the domain right now, but it was intriguing.
Long story short, I went to the site, which was peculiar. It asked a lot of personal questions of you to submit an application to be considered for something… what I didn’t know, it wasn’t clear, but it wasn’t threatening either. The questions were certainly bizarre, ie. have you ever intentionally killed something larger than a mouse? But they never asked you for any identifying information besides an email.
I applied, and waited. A few days later I got an email that said I didn’t qualify. I was like, whatever, that was stupid.
Weeks later I got another email telling me about The Game.
I thought it was genius.
Posted by Francesco on February 3rd, 2008It was good.
Posted by Sunil on February 28th, 2008Leave a Reply