Serenity, Advanced Screenings, and Buzz Advertising. by LivingImpaired

GENERAL DISCUSSIONS

Serenity, Advanced Screenings, and Buzz Advertising.

POSTED BY: LIVINGIMPAIRED
UPDATED: Thursday, June 16, 2005 18:31
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Wednesday, June 15, 2005 6:13 PM

"If this movie matters to you, let somebody know. Let everybody know. Make yourselves heard. If you don't like the movie, this is a time for quiet, silent contemplation. But, when the unfinished credits roll, if you still call yourself a Browncoat, remember the millions of people who don't...who might."

-- Joss Whedon, prologue to advanced screenings of Serenity

Universal is conducting one of the most unorthodox rollouts ever done for a movie. For Browncoats it can be irritating as hell, but whether we realize it or not, it's all in our best interest. Every frustration that comes from the advanced screenings, from the scarcity of tickets to those asshat scalpers, it all works for us in the end, because Universal has a problem. Joss Whedon has a problem. We all have a problem.

Serenity is a tough sell to the mainstream. So was Firefly. It was the primary reason it was cancelled in the first place. It's a Western in an age when the Western has been out of vogue for several decades. It's a space opera without aliens. It's based on a TV series that few people ever saw, and many more have never heard of, and if they have, it's in a vague, "Oh, yeah, I remember the ads for that" kind of way. Furthermore, the movie has a complex premise that's difficult to convey in a trailer alone. Those that doubt me, watch it again. Pretend you know nothing of Firefly, and ask yourself what you have. Alternately, read ahead and I'll save you the trouble:

1) There's a bunch of people on a ship. Many of them are very hot.
2) There's a leader. He's angry about something. He's preparing his people to do something about it. Something dangerous.
3) The leader's protecting a girl. She has superpowers. She's dangerous.
4) The girl has enemies (the Alliance?) and they sent in a scary black dude. He has a pointy sword weapon.
5) Some kind of snarling monsters are involved.
6) There's a space battle.
7) There are explosions.
8) The movie's made by that Buffy guy.

Really, that's it. A Browncoat would be able to divine much more, obviously, but that's preaching to the converted. Most of the trailer is dedicated to making people like Mal as a hero, without explaining much of what's going to happen in the movie. I get the impression that the advertising department is hoping that people will like the explosions and take it on faith that there's a plot to go along with it. It's sort of like marketing a porn movie. People expect there to be a plot, without much caring what it is. Unfortunately, people that go for that sort of thing will find that XXX 2: State of the Union will be much more to their speed, whereas the people that would like Serenity best might not realize it from the trailer.

This is where buzz advertising comes in. Increasingly, market researchers have come to realize that the world is over-saturated with advertisements. They're everywhere, and therefore we've all become very adept at ignoring them as best we can. They fade to the background and become invisible. What's worse is that we're becoming savvy to their tricks, especially the highly educated and the high earning. An actor on TV expounding on the virtues of Product A is not a convincing argument to spend 50 cents more in lieu of buying Product B. However, if your neighbor Bob from two houses over tells you that he tried Product A just last week and it worked wonders... Well, that would mean considerably more.

Now there are entire advertising firms that specialize in buzz advertising. They recruit agents and give them free product samples. If the agents like the goodies, the firm encourages them to "buzz" their friends and family—i.e., get them to buy the product, too. Then the agents write reports back to the firm, which turns around and gives them more free stuff. It's cheap, it's effective, and most of the consumers involved never realize they've been buzzed.

Universal is pulling exactly the same trick, only they're not going through a firm. They're not even giving out free samples. They know that while Serentiy has a lot of things working against it marketing-wise, the movie has one solid advantage over every other film slated for release this year: A dedicated fan base with a track record of taking advertising into its own hands. Browncoats are notorious for it. When the show was teetering on the brink of cancellation, the fans came together and used their own money to buy an ad in Variety magazine. Charity drives have been organized in the name of the show. After campaigning relentlessly for a DVD release, Browncoats pushed up the sales to extraordinary levels, not only by buying copies for themselves, but by buying copies for every person they could afford to buy copies for. The mark of a Browncoat is not in the amount of obscure trivia she can rattle off, but in the number of people she's “converted.” (For my own score, I've lost count.)

The fan base is a source of raw, advertising power. All Universal has to do is put up a website and let a handful of people into see the movie early. Then they can sit back and let us fight over tickets on E-bay. We'll stay true to form. The Haves will write reviews for Ain't It Cool News and squeal in geek delight on the forums, egging the Have Nots into even greater anticipation for the eventual release date. We will all redouble our efforts to expose the uninitiated to the DVD sets and force people to sit down at our computers to watch the trailer—whether they want to or not. And I pity the friend of a Browncoat that doesn't drag his or her sorry ass to the movie come September 30th. There will be hell to pay otherwise.

Congratulations, Browncoats. You are apart of something bigger than yourselves. You've just become a volunteer foot soldier in a new kind of advertising campaign. And you'll keep working at it, too, because we all know that if we want a sequel, we must first make Serenity a success.

________________

"Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn't suck." -- Joss Whedon

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Wednesday, June 15, 2005 6:39 PM

BONNIET

I still don't see what's wrong with releasing the movie now, letting word of mouth build until it's huge, and then eventually having it be considered for Best Picture. Like that little movie about that Greek family, ... or Star Wars. The first one.

So, why wait? Why all the heartache such as when people can't get tickets and they are all slurped up by scalpers? That doesn't exactly breed good will.... just sayin'.

Summer is when date movies are hot. Sci-Fi movies make great date movies. I'm old enough to remember the summer when Star Wars was released and that's the only movie I saw that summer, over and over and over again.... and it didn't have any big stars and I had never heard of it before it hit theaters. And look what happened with it!

I still think Serenity could be another Star Wars - the original one. So I'm all for releasing it now and having it be the summer sleeper hit. I don't mind the screenings, really, even though I can't get a ticket to save my life.... but I wonder what good they do except build word of mouth. Which is good, but we already do that.
Yes?

"I can't keep track of her when she's not
incorporeally possessing a space ship.
Don't look at me."

http://www.cafepress.com/serenity05movie

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Thursday, June 16, 2005 3:09 PM

LIVINGIMPAIRED

You're right, of course. The movie should already be in theatres. The advanced screenings are still a clever marketing strategy, though. Universal simply should have started the screenings several months ago and released the film in early summer.

I agree with you that the advanced screenings are frustrating. One either has to go to inordinate lengths to get tickets or live with the fact that there are people out there who are in the know and you aren't. Either way, there's a cost associated with the screening, either in the effort to obtain tickets or in the knowledge that you haven't. In a way, the struggle makes the movie all the more valuable, because it's no longer simply a matter or biding your time until the official release date. It's a pain in the ass for us, but it has a certain amount of Machiavellian ingenuity.

________________

"Very occasionally, if you really pay attention, life doesn't suck." -- Joss Whedon

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Thursday, June 16, 2005 6:31 PM

WHISPER

OK here's the thing. I think Universal is brilliant for waiting to release the movie. Much to our fanbases dismay. For one thing, you're talking about word of mouth advertising. Well release the movie now and you'll have some, sure, but not nearly as much as waiting to september. Universal will be able to market the three (plus?) sold out screenings that will peak peoples interest. The word of mouth will slowly build to where, come september, hardly anybody will not know what Serenity is. Release it now, us browncoats would surely go see it, but not too many other people know about it, despite our best efforts. The movie would probably do marginally well, but would be out of the boxoffice before other people decided to go. It would prbably be a movie regular people would say "I'll just rent it." Plus, there are so many huge "blockbuster" movies coming out in the next weeks/months that Serenity would not even be a blip on summer radar. As much as I love Firefly and want Serenity to do well, I know that the average joe is going to want to watch movies like "War of the Worlds" this summer with big name actors, not a movie with nearly unknown actors based on a cancelled tv show. Serenity would not do well released now. It probably would not have done well released in April, because of Star Wars. It would have been forgotten in the SW frenzy. Another added plus to the advance screenings is that the money Universal is receiving from it now, they can put directly into advertising. That means more trailers, tv spots, posters, you name it. Basically more exposure and more time for that precious word of mouth to build. Bring on September 30th.

I hope that all made sense.

www.whispergraphics.net

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