Circle Jerking the Snake
I promised a follow-up to the entry I made after Snakes’ (on a Plane, fool) opening day. Here it is. Sorry for the delay, but work and life got in the way.
I don’t want to discuss the movie or its performance as much as I’d like to write a few words about the bloggers who talked it up. Specifically, the bloggers who sang the movie’s praises simply because they saw the Studio’s blogger-outreach as one of the Seven Signs of the Collapse of Marketing As We Know It™ (and, lo, they rejoiced in it). And specifically-specifically, their reaction after things didn’t turn out so well.
The first thing that pops into my mind that didn’t immediately happen within the marketing blogger hype circle was any sort of deep reflection into what Snakes failing to live up to their expectations meant for the school of marketing they preach. I mean, c’mon, Defamer can instantly see and dissect the ramifications (even if half in jest) but the marketing blogger clique can’t?
Now that the value of a year of obsessive, overwhelmingly favorable internet hype buzz has been measured at a disappointing $15.25 million, or roughly the rate of return New Line could have expected if it had placed cartoon images of Samuel L. Jackson hugging pink pythons on the side of a Happy Meal box, the studios will spend this morning dismantling their Why Can’t We Come Up With Our Own Funny Titles Around Which Bloggers Will Construct Loving YouTube Parodies? think-tanks and redistributing the personnel to their Dreaming Up Projects In Which Will Ferrell Can Run Around In Circles, Causing His Swollen, Pale Belly To Jiggle departments. (”Monday Morning Box Office: Snakes On A Bomb“)
Instead of saying, “o.k., our thesis didn’t pan out; what does this mean,” what we saw was the marketing bloggers begin to spin– spin how the opening day box office returns were actually a rousing success. Mack Collier (the other Mack, thank you very much) over at The Viral Garden actually tried to show– using statistics only an Enron accountant could love, and only after taking some time to blast the mainstream media for “turning” on the movie– how Snakes on a Plane performed better at the box office than Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest.
Excuse me?
“But Mack (the ad monkey Simpson one), the only thing that matters is if it makes a profit– not how long it takes to get there.” Sorry, but simply turning a profit after an ever-expanding timeline isn’t a metric that allows Hollywood producers and moneymen to sleep easily at night. Besides, I could shoot Samuel Jackson reading from the pages of a phonebook straight into the camera, release it without any hype of any sort– Internet or otherwise– and it would eventually turn a profit (perhaps even faster than Snakes on a Plane did). If Snakes turns a profit (and I’m sure it eventually will) and the marketing bloggers claim victory, take it with a grain of salt.
“But Mack (yeah, the ad guy again), the momentum will build and it will do even better next weekend.” Oh yeah?
Football season started early as Mark Wahlberg’s “Invincible,” a Walt Disney tale about a real-life walk-on who signed with the Philadelphia Eagles in the 1970s, debuted as the top weekend movie with $17 million. The previous No. 1 flick, New Line Cinema’s “Snakes on a Plane,” lost altitude in its second weekend, falling to sixth place with $6.4 million, a steep 58 percent drop, according to studio estimates Sunday. (CNN)
All the “but… but… buts” do is simply put off the chance to look at what the disappointment means for “new” marketing, and I’m not sure we’ll have that discussion any time soon because so many people have swallowed their own Kool-Aid.
Joe Jaffe, to his credit, says, “I’m not sure I as much predicted it would be a smash as I hoped it would be, based on the exponential validation it would have lended to the still-young and oft misunderstood social media and new marketing worlds.” He then follows that statement up, though, with a series of “but… but… buts.”
Many of the marketing bloggers are way too heavily vested in proving the validity (nay, the superior qualities) of “new” marketing. They’re not marketing bloggers, they’re marketing 2.0 bloggers, and the problem with this is it precludes any sort of honest reflection on what was tried and what went wrong (though you’ll surely hear a lot about the third leg of marketing post mortems: what went right).
Look. I don’t want to see anyone fail, least of all people who work hard and believe in what they’re doing. But I’m also not going to sit here and blow smoke up my own ass trying to make myself believe this medium is more mature– or wields the power that comes from maturity– than it really is, especially when I’m charged with spending other people’s money in the pursuit of results.
The podcasts, RSS feeds and blogs that so engage the daily time and energies of the leading-edge digerati are alien or unknown concepts for most of the U.S. adult population. […] While marketing prognosticators and technophiles rush into the future, raving about the next big content delivery system or ad model, the fact is most Americans — notably adults with steady incomes — still get their content the old-fashioned way. (AdAge)
I’m not saying we shouldn’t embrace new media and new models; we should, absolutely. Experimentation leads to new, better ways of doing things (the creative revolution, anyone?). What I am saying is if you’re going to discuss all that’s right with the new world, be prepared to offer up some honest reflection on all that’s wrong with it when something goes badly.
Or, for god’s sake, if your only purpose it to perpetuate and participate in the blogger circle jerk of hype without offering up anything from the other side of the coin, put a freaking disclaimer up on your site somewhere so you don’t unduly influence a poor junior brand manager into doing something that will cost her her job when it goes south.
Email Article Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 12:17am Mack Simpson
Filed under: Ad Jungle, Ad Nauseam | add this post to del.icio.us
Technorati Tags: Advertising, Marketing, Snakes on a Plane, Hype
26 Comments Add your own
1. makethelogobigger | August 28th, 2006 at 2:35 am
Are we also Plane-movied out as well? Maybe the damn snakes needed to be on a sub.
I may have to semi-take foot out of mouth after I re-read my prediction. The thing I thought may have given it a shot may have been part of the problem: a pseudo horror/thriller supported largely by a blog campaign that may have been too campy?
Maybe the movie can’t overcome two identities it seems to have when it comes to promotion: is it a thriller or is it a Scary Movie type-punchline.
Interesting too that Red Eye had no blog support and opened to 16 mill - and finished at approx. 58 mill domestic/ 37 mill foreign in eight weeks of release.
(I’m not saying Snakes can’t do that, and it is currently at 26 mill in 1.5 weeks, but it would have to average eight mill each week for six additional weeks. The second weekend dropoff by half imo says this will be a challenge though.)
Not to mention Jodie Foster’s ‘no-blog’ promoted Flight Plan which followed RE and did 2.5 times the biz in 24 weeks.
I’m not sure what the solution is. Still think blogs can be a worthwhile pursuit when it comes to marketing a flick. But maybe the message needs to more accurately reflect the movie it’s promoting instead of the audience’s idea of what it may be.
Which leads to the next logical question: does the studio now have to take ownership of the blog effort and avoid potential problems with bloggers who make shit up? Of course I think most of us can see how that’ll turn out: Fake reviewers who have screened the flick and rave about it.
Yeah, that never happens.
;-p
2. Mack Collier | August 28th, 2006 at 8:37 am
“But Mack (yeah, the ad guy again), the momentum will build and it will do even better next weekend.” Oh yeah?”
Oh c’mon! I’ve heard every prediction under the sun about SoaP, but I have NEVER heard ONE blogger say it would have a BIGGER take on the SECOND weekend!
“I’m not saying we shouldn’t embrace new media and new models; we should, absolutely. Experimentation leads to new, better ways of doing things (the creative revolution, anyone?). What I am saying is if you’re going to discuss all that’s right with the new world, be prepared to offer up some honest reflection on all that’s wrong with it when something goes badly.”
What exactly went badly here? A very bad movie that would have likely gone straight to DVD, will instead likely make a theatrical run that pays for itself, then go to DVD giving New Line more or less pure profit on all DVD sales.
How is that bad? Because bloggers didn’t push SoaP to meet unrealistic expectations from the MSM?
Come on.
3. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 9:34 am
Sorry, Mack (Collier– this could get confusing), but the mainstream media had no expectations for Snake… at least not until the blogger feedback loop got cranked up.
It was, in fact, the bloggers themselves– particularly the marketing bloggers– who held the unrealistic expectations.
(NOTE: I’m running into an all-day Gatorade presentation, literally as soon as I press ’send,’ so expect serious delays on commenting from here on.)
4. J.D. | August 28th, 2006 at 12:50 pm
After reading this post, I’m pretty sure you’re a complete douche. No need to read anymore.
5. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Way to elevate the conversation.
Despite your protestation to the contrary, I notice from the logs you continued to poke around the site, even after commenting.
All the same, don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.
6. Mack Collier | August 28th, 2006 at 2:34 pm
“Sorry, Mack (Collier– this could get confusing), but the mainstream media had no expectations for Snake… at least not until the blogger feedback loop got cranked up.
It was, in fact, the bloggers themselves– particularly the marketing bloggers– who held the unrealistic expectations.”
Eh?!? Please point me to these ‘marketing bloggers’ that posted their ‘unrealistic expectations’. I commented on Marketing Nirvana that the movie’s opening weekend take could be anywhere from 5-50 million, that it was just impossible to tell how many bloggers would go, and if they would like the show.
They did, and they did. That’s why it has 22 or so million after 2 weeks.
Again, if SoaP had gotten about 5 million opening weekend, and bloggers were blogging that they had gone to the film and that it sucked, THEN we could say that SoaP’s marketing ‘went badly’, Instead the bloggers absolutely LOVED it, and it landed at the TOP of the box-office.
Sorry Mack, but that’s a success, and anyone that claims otherwise, is spinning something.
7. theo kie | August 28th, 2006 at 7:42 pm
I couldn’t agree with you more, Mack. I’m all for supporting those working to find new media paths. Still, I can’t say I’m sad to see all the online hystrionics of the past couple years finally running head-long into some old-fashioned, “does it work?” scrutiny. The more real, client money is invested, the more this industry will have to prove it offers a reliable, worthwhile value. RTO is a bitch, baby.
(BTW, J.D., grow up. If you’re unable to offer anything more than juvenile name-calling just go away.)
8. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 9:59 pm
Mack C., you weighed in with a prediction the movie would do anywhere from 5 to 50 million on its opening weekend?
Congratulations. You went out on a limb and predicted it would do horribly, or maybe piss-poorly, or maybe just bad, or maybe eh-alright, or maybe o.k., or maybe average, or maybe above average, or maybe big or maybe even huge.
Really covered your bets on that one.
NYTimes: “Projections within Hollywood and on Internet movie sites had predicted that the film might take in anywhere from $20 million to more than $30 million on its opening weekend.”
(Still wrong, but at least they narrowed their spread to 10 million.)
For people expecting the “big ‘mo” to kick in, look no further than Snakes on a Blog.
New Line had a year of free hype from bloggers, yet “all this effort, it seemed, yielded no more results than the conventional methods used by Hollywood for decades.” NYTimes
They wound up spending $20 million in traditional, above-the-line marketing in the closing weeks once “Industry surveys in recent weeks indicated only modest interest among the moviegoing masses.” Too little, too late.
Don’t think what the blogger-hype produced for the movie was disappointing? How about taking into consideration what the client thinks? (You’ve dealt with those, right?)
“At New Line executives were still chewing over the results of their rollicking Internet experiment. ‘We’ll make money with this picture, it’s just more disappointing because of all the inflated expectations,’ Mr. Tuckerman [president for theatrical distribution for New Line] said. ‘Now we have to sit back and figure out how to take the lessons from it.’” NYTimes
Look, a careful reading of my post will reveal no “I told you so.” It will reveal no “Snakes on a Plane sucked—ha!” What a careful reading will reveal is precisely what you missed: the very point of it; that it would behoove marketing bloggers to occasionally do what actual marketing professionals (not armchair dilettantes who deal only in hype and hypotheticals) do—perform an honest assessment of their theories when real data comes in (a marketing post mortem). You learn more from your failures, after all, than from your successes.
But we haven’t seen that because too many marketing bloggers are too deeply vested in proving “new” marketing works (because of whatever reason, including financial interests in its success) to be bothered to publicly point out failings and shortcomings when they happen.
Where’s the discussion, post-Snakes, on “is the power of bloggers overrated”? Where’s the discussion on “are bloggers only talking to themselves”? Where’s the discussion on how “bloggers talk, but does anyone outside of the blogosphere listen”?
I’m media agnostic. I don’t have a vested interest in new media or old media. What I have is a vested interest in what works for my clients.
So, fine, if you think “new” marketing really pulled one out for the Gipper when it comes to Snakes on a Plane, I guess there’s nothing to be done about that.
Most of the marketing professionals I know who are working today and who possess an ounce of sophistication will likely disagree with you.
And if they, like you, felt the blogger hype was going to knock the snake-hide cover off the ball before opening weekend, they’re not wasting time trying to spin straw into gold today.
Today they’re trying to figure out what went wrong because, when they do, they’ll be that much farther ahead of those who waste their time sitting and spinning in front of the loom.
9. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 10:00 pm
Theo: thanks.
10. Mack Collier | August 28th, 2006 at 10:33 pm
“Mack C., you weighed in with a prediction the movie would do anywhere from 5 to 50 million on its opening weekend?
Congratulations. You went out on a limb and predicted it would do horribly, or maybe piss-poorly, or maybe just bad, or maybe eh-alright, or maybe o.k., or maybe average, or maybe above average, or maybe big or maybe even huge.
Really covered your bets on that one.”
I also blogging about what I thought was good AND bad about New Line’s efforts BEFORE SoaP opened. I saw where you have had PLENTY to say about the promotion AFTER the movie opened, but I can’t find where you were willing to offer up any opinions about the film’s promotion BEFORE it opened.
So who exactly was covering their bets here?
“New Line had a year of free hype from bloggers, yet “all this effort, it seemed, yielded no more results than the conventional methods used by Hollywood for decades.” NYTimes”
So B-Movies routinely open with 15.3 million? Give me a break!
“What a careful reading will reveal is precisely what you missed: the very point of it; that it would behoove marketing bloggers to occasionally do what actual marketing professionals (not armchair dilettantes who deal only in hype and hypotheticals) do—perform an honest assessment of their theories when real data comes in (a marketing post mortem). You learn more from your failures, after all, than from your successes.”
I’m still waiting on you to explain how a B-Movie opening with 15.3 million and at the TOP of the box-office is a ‘failure’.
You can’t do it, because it wasn’t. Now if you want to label SoaP a ‘failure’ because it didn’t score 50 million or so on opening weekend, then YOU are the one with the unrealistic expectations, not marketing bloggers.
“And if they, like you, felt the blogger hype was going to knock the snake-hide cover off the ball before opening weekend”
Here’s the problem, your entire argument is based on a faulty assumption. I never thought that bloggers were going to help SoaP ‘knock the cover off the ball’, I thought that the hype in the blogosphere would result in BLOGGERS seeing the movie in droves, and sure enough they did.
Now the unknown was whether or not bloggers going to see this film would result in the mainstream going to see this film. It hasn’t so far, but then again, SoaP doesn’t need the mainstream buying in to be a success.
Again, after 2 weeks, SoaP has already covered roughly 50-66% of its production and marketing cost. Which is about where Pirates of the Caribbean was after 2 weeks.
Again, show me how that points to SoaP being a ‘failure’.
You can’t do it.
“Today they’re trying to figure out what went wrong because, when they do, they’ll be that much further ahead of those who waste their time sitting and spinning in front of the loom.”
And that’s because their entire knowledge of this campaign and the movie’s expectations came from watching Entertainment Tonight.
I’m guessing your’s did as well.
SoaP opened #1, was proclaimed a huge hit by the bloggers that saw it, and has covered at least half of its total cost after just 2 weeks. Even Pirates of the Caribbean can’t say that.
A B-Movie opens at #1 in the nation, and a week later you are blogging about how it is a failure?
Who is the one spinning here?
11. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
You keep repeating yourself.
But that’s fine, Mack C., consider yours to be the last words.
12. Mack Collier | August 28th, 2006 at 11:06 pm
“You keep repeating yourself.
But that’s fine, Mack C., consider yours to be the last words. ”
What a total cop-out. So you make your points, I address them, offer my own points that I want you to address, and you want to take your ball and go home?
Talk about elevating the conversation….
13. jamesh-h | August 28th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Sweet Jesus. Can we all start defending/lambasting “Invincible” now? What i hope is - and I say this fresh after screening the Deluxe Edition of Roadhouse - when they release SOAP on DVD, they do it with Kevin Smith’s Mystery-Science-Theater Commentary.
14. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 11:15 pm
Mack C.,
No, what I am saying is, “I work for a living, have someplace to be early in the morning and enjoy my sleep.”
Ad hominem will get you nowhere, especially in defense of J.D.’s comments.
Good night.
15. Mack Simpson | August 28th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
James: funny as always.
16. theo kie | August 28th, 2006 at 11:28 pm
Not to extend the conversation too long (sorry Mack S.), but I wanted to ask a question, as I’m always looking for new measuring tools regarding how well or poorly online efforts work.
Mack C., you mention bloggers went to see this movie in droves. Is this, in fact, true? I’m not trying to be a smartass. I’m honestly interested in whether studios (or others) have found a way to link sales directly to those who are blogging. How do you recognize a blogger at the box office vs. someone drawn in by the $20 million in traditional promotion?
As for studio folk who expected online hubbub to generate huge sales, that’s not the fault of “Entertainment Tonight” as much as online marketing proponents who continuously claim to be the new solution. Clients leap onto the bandwagon because (a) it’s a seemingly cheap experiment, and (b) it’s “cool”. Unfortunately, “profitability” has six syllables, not one - a completely different beast.
A truly enlightening piece of information to know would be this: what does the studio believe opening weekend sales would have been without the last-minute television and print push?
17. Mack Collier | August 29th, 2006 at 12:10 am
“Mack C.,
No, what I am saying is, “I work for a living, have someplace to be early in the morning and enjoy my sleep.”
Ad hominem will get you nowhere, especially in defense of JD’s comments.
Good night. ”
Again with the incorrect assumptions! Wasn’t defending JD’s comments, I was pointing out how ironic it was for you to bash JD for ‘not elevating the conversation’, then you turn around and grab your ball and go home when asked to actually defend your off-the-wall claims.
“A truly enlightening piece of information to know would be this: what does the studio believe opening weekend sales would have been without the last-minute television and print push?”
I think the right question to ask is “What would SoaP’s opening weekend have been if New Line had sent lawyers after Brian Finklestein back in January and attempted to close down Snakes on a Blog?’.
Hint: Much less than 15.3 million. That’s why it is simply amazing to me to see some bloggers claiming that this movie’s promotion was a ‘failure’. Of course, the ones that I am seeing doing this, are like Mack here, they had no opinion about the film’s promotion prior to Aug. 17th, but after the MSM decided that the promotion was a failure (again, for sending a B-Movie to the top of the box-office), then they decided that they agreed.
So the lesson to be learned here is…..what a B-Movie actually MAKES at the box-office doesn’t define it’s success, it’s what the critics say. Gotcha.
18. makethelogobigger | August 29th, 2006 at 2:02 pm
Short answer:
Make a better movie.
Long-winded:
jamesh-h - you had me at “Deluxe Edition of Roadhouse”
Geez, I stop blogging for a day and look what you kids get into.
Two words: Blair Witch. Still the standard for this ‘new whacky internet buzz’ sensation thing.
Made with nothing more than three actors and a video camera in a forest one weekend for 60K. And went on to gross how much? 248 mill worldwide. And promoted how?
A fake website. That’s buzz building.
El Mariachi, by a rebel without a crew and made for 7K and grossed 2 mil domestic. Cut in Robert Rodriguez’s living room with two crappy beta decks and audio cassettes. Picked-up for distribution, yatta, yatta, and the rest is history.
Make - a - good - movie.
Mack C, here’s how I gauge success: how much a movie makes in relation to how much it costs, and to a degree, in what category it comes out, and, for who. A success in Hollywood terms is $$$. A success for consumers is seeing a good movie. We know those two aren’t always the same thing.
Now 15 mil ain’t chump change, granted, but you can’t discount the effect of past performance of other movies in the same genre either. SoaP just appears weaker given that criteria, plus, the high cost of its production. If it taps out at $30-35 mil, I would have to say if it had a major star like Jackson, and that’s the best it could do…?
Over six weeks, here is RE’s, then Flightplan’s, then Soap’s six consecutive weekend grosses (in millions approx.):
16-10-7-9-4-2
24-14-10-6-4-2
15-6 - - - -
I also gauge a potential bust based on the amount of hype surrounding it ahead of time, like we had with SoaP. Pro sports is full of players that never made it or performed as advertised. Why? They couldn’t play. They weren’t as good as advertised. They crumbled. Name your poison.
The height of the fall is always proportional to the height of the pedestal we build for them.
Bottom line is: still gotta be able to play though.
And as mentioned for consumers, it still has to be a good movie.
I had the opportunity, (or misfortune), to help out an agency in the final days of pitching the marketing for Burger King on arguably one of the worst movies AND box-office bombs at the time, Ah-nold’s Last Action Hero. Classic promotional machine into high gear: They had tie-ins set-up for every Burger King from here to China, promotions up the wazoo, sweepstakes, etc.
Then I saw the movie. It sucked to the nth power. Forget all the tie-ins. At the end of the day, nothing would save it. (Watching the movie and his subsequent follow-up hit True Lies, it was eerie how much he learned by correcting scenes from LAH in True Lies that I felt were the original problem. Mostly, Ah-nold’s fans don’t want to see him fail to save kids or be the hero.)
So this week as a marketer, I’m asking myself what is more cost effective: a blog, or a traditional print/TV/radio campaign with promotional tie-ins at retail? Old-school peeps will say gimmee butts in seats and I don’t care how you do it. My hunch though says blogs will become part of their strategy from here out, not an ‘either or’ deal.
(But now, every movie campaign will include a blog for opening weekend, bet. Because you know studios are thinking if a blog can help a movie like SoaP, imagine what it can do for Water World III.)
The support and blog love leading up the release was typically along these lines though: “lessons for marketers…” and so on. It may not be predictions of box office glory, but you have to admit the blog tactic was getting heavy coverage as the ‘new wave.’
What lessons though?
A ‘civilian’ named Brian Finkelstein started this. Nobody else. (Unless someone from New Line wants to come clean right here and confirm my suspicions that this was a plant by their marketing department the whole time.) What could anyone other than Brian do but sit back and watch this unfold? It was his effort, not their’s.
If the SoaP blog campaign was as effective as is being touted, I would’ve hated to see the opening numbers for the movie without the blog. (theo kie’s last point).
I suppose when they tested it, they polled audiences with a basic “How did you hear about the movie?” or asked if it “had an influence on their decision to see it” on their response cards.
The lesson for marketers should be this:
Don’t just start throwing up blogs in hopes of discovering gold. Only thing worse than a movie that sucks would be a blog that tries to convince you otherwise.
While it was a cool concept to get behind, the idea of a whacky blog was more intriguing than the movie it was supposed to be for.
But doesn’t this just reinforce the old adage that, great advertising can’t save a bad product? Want the blog efforts to truly kick ass? Make a better movie.
Stop using marketing efforts to salvage mediocrity, and start using them to enhance an already good product.
19. Mack Collier | August 29th, 2006 at 3:09 pm
“But doesn’t this just reinforce the old adage that, great advertising can’t save a bad product? Want the blog efforts to truly kick ass? Make a better movie.”
The problem is, the only people saying this was a ‘bad product’, are the MSM, and bloggers that never saw it. The bloggers that DID see it, absolutely LOVED it! I have yet to see the FIRST blogger claim that they went to this movie and did NOT have a blast.
The bottom line here is that the MSM didn’t break this story, and really had squat to do with the hype that built around the movie, and they were none too happy about that. It’s no coincidence that they did a complete 180 on the film in less than 48 hours. When reports started coming in VERY early Friday morning that the reviews from movie goers were overwhelmingly positive, MSM said it was a ’summer sleeper’. Then on Sunday morning when New Line annoinced that sales would likely be 15.3 mil for the opening weekend, they slammed it unmercifully.
A B-Movie opens at #1, and yet some say that is a sign of failure. I have yet to see ONE person say they saw this movie, and did NOT have a blast, and yet it’s a failure.
Slamming this movie because you don’t think the promotion was effective is one thing, slamming this movie’s promotion simply because you never liked the idea of the film when you first heard about it months ago, is quite another.
20. theo kie | August 29th, 2006 at 3:13 pm
Well-stated, MTLB. Still, while I give blogs their due and continued role in marketing, I find it amazing how some people refuse to give up on the idea that blog-based marketing simply…can’t…fail.
The best “new media” folks will tell you there are too many ways for such efforts to stumble. Bad product…too much talk…poor timing…using the wrong tonality…suddenly emerging news draws attention elsewhere…the list goes on.
The good (and, for marketers, bad) thing about the internet is the fact it can’t be controlled. Having bloggers move product is nice when it happens, but there’s no way you can rely on it - no matter how much buzz they may generate.
21. makethelogobigger | August 29th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
“Slamming this movie because you don’t think the promotion was effective is one thing, … is quite another.”
Slamming? I’m just not tripping over myself with joy because a blog started by a non-professional ‘citizen’ marketer caught a studio off-guard and now the same studio is heralded as embracing new media? Not buying it because they reacted, they didn’t create this.
They responded to comments about the movie, which is the equivalent of a DVD with alternate endings so you can have the happy ending you want.
Not the same thing.
Your argument doesn’t consider a third option: maybe people don’t like that kind of movie. But to imply in some of your posts on your blog that the reason the ones who didn’t like it aren’t the target and aren’t ‘new media/internet savvy’ is a very narrow view.
And the studio is heralded as embracing new media? They got caught looking and had nothing to do with the start of it. That’s a lesson all studios should learn.
The fact that most new-media Web 2.0-speak media bloggers raved about the using a blog in this way set the movie up for those comparisons, whether you agree or not. Who hyped and who was realistic? Only those bloggers can answer honestly for themselves.
And, again: how is it a B-movie like Red Eye was so much better than SoaP without any of the blog hoopla to support it?
Both B-movies, but which had to work harder once it was released? Time will tell after Labor Day if SoaP has legs or not.
22. Mack Simpson | August 30th, 2006 at 2:10 pm
All bloggers who saw it loved it? You must not be looking very hard. Try searching “snakes sucked” or “snakes was bad,” or any other permutation, and you’ll find posts like this one.
23. theo kie | August 31st, 2006 at 2:11 am
Mack C, I just don’t understand your logic in responding to many of these posts. You seem unable to consider for even a moment that all the blog hype might not have succeeded in business terms.
I left a lengthy run-down of the evidence on your site - pre-release research on purchase intent, comparisons to non-hyped genre films and the studio’s own comments stating this was a failure in business terms.
I have nothing against this film. Nor do others here, from what I read. This is a marketing discussion, not a debate on whether the movie was good or bad. I don’t see how you can make the argument blogging produced noticeable increases in ticket sales. You’ve offered no proof of such, while others have provided much backup to support the opposite point of view.
24. Mack Simpson | September 4th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
It seems pretty simple to me:
The marketers at New Line put together a marketing plan– or at least bent their plan once the Internet hype took hold– and executed it.
Marketing plans, by their nature, are executed in order to generate “X” sales. Hitting “X” results in “making plan,” greater than X equals a fantastic success, while less than X is a failure. It may be me, but I believe that’s a pretty universal world-view amongst marketers.
In the case of Snakes on a Plane, the marketing plan was, by all reasonable reckoning, to reach out to bloggers in hopes the ensuing buzz would generate the numbers they were after at the box office– the “X.” The final results, by their own admission, were “disappointing,” or, in other words, “less than X.”
They didn’t “make plan,” and none of the marketing bloggers were willing (or able?) to discuss the ramifications.
Theo, I think we’re banging our heads against a Mack Collier wall on this one.
Cheers,
–M.
25. Dabitch | September 7th, 2006 at 10:32 am
You know what the motherfucking problem about blogs promoting films is? the motherfucking film opens in the United states and the blogs are read by a worldwide audience.
I would have so seen the film if I could.
26. American Copywriter | September 10th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Late to this! I really figured it would do well due to the buzz. I thought it had tipped over from being a B movie to being a pop culture event. But no. Didn’t happen. As I addressed in the last AC podcast, I think, we were looking at lots of awareness and no persuasion or call to action. Did any of the blogs try to organize watch parties? Not releasing the movie to critics was probably a mistake in hindsight as well.
In the end, any discussion that includes a mention of Roadhouse on DVD is a good one.
Happy football day.
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed