three of my favourite things… in one blog post
Viral Marketing for Movies
Stupid Lawyers
Joss Whedon’s SERENITY.
Wonderfully combine in THIS story
Expounded on here at a URL which really says it all:
www.overlawyered.com/2006/11/oops_we_sued_our_own_viral_mar.html
Briliiant… Absurd though it seems, it does raise the serious point that Web 2.0 “pro-sumer” dynamics sit very ill with the traditional distinction between producers and consumers. There are other examples – the user generated Chevy Tahoe adverts that Chevy’ marketeers hoped would build grass roots support, but ended up denigrating the car’s lack of social consciousness (at least Chevy was smart enough not to sue them, but you know they wanted to) being the most high profile.
Oh, go BROWNCOATS.
November 14th, 2006 at 12:09
How could a studio sue fans for helping them do their job?
I think even a year on, a studios’ publicity depts and legal team would have adopted a different attitude. While the approval of hardcore fans isn’t guarantee box office success, ignoring or attacking them can only damage it.
For me, the studios obsession with big opening weekends has meant that films like ‘Serenity’ (commercial, but lacking big names and not part of a widely known franchise) have little or no chance of getting the audience they deserve- at least not on their theatrical release.
Maybe word of mouth, consumer power or whatver you want to call it is now more of a DVD thing (eg. The Shawshank Redemption, Donnie Darko)
While ‘Serenity’ didn’t do great at the box office, it was no.2 in the DVD charts in the UK (held off by the mighty wallace and gromit).
PS Go Browncoats (unless a certain studio has copyrighted it and now wants to sue us!)
November 14th, 2006 at 12:19
Sorry just re-read that article. They sent out cease and desist orders to themselves? That’s even more stupid. Then again the great MrWhedon has said the publicity for firefly/serenity was is managed from the start, makreting it as a comedy (‘Meet the most spaced out crew in space!’ sheesh)
Anyway, enough blog hogging- back to work!
November 15th, 2006 at 21:26
The studio did mangle SERENITY, don’t get me started on that.
But this an example of not mangled marketing, but really good marketing, then being mangled by bad corporate understanding of the way the world now works.