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Not one time during the entire twelve hour marathon did they advertise the movie, and yet with almost every commercial break we were bombarded with the same promos for Galactica, the Stargates, and one of their crappy "original" movies, Caved In. Not only that, there were ads for three theatrical features (Grandma's House, Hostel, and Underworld: Evolution), neither of which is a Universal film.

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Originally posted by RocketJock:
Look on the bright side; Sci-Fi obviously considers Firefly to be a sufficient draw in its own right to run a marathon without needing the extra incentive of making it into a adfest for Serenity. Must be doing good in the ratings...

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There are also far more female fans than the typical sci-fi show attracts.

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...Odd little note: Only one of the people I have shown Firefly to did not like it, he was a horny teenage boy who fell into the 18-25 year old sci-fi fan category. (Kind of narrows down what his actual age was doesn’t it?)

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Originally posted by christhecynic:
How do you know? I mean aren't the ones who say women don't like sci-fi the same ones who think Firefly is only marketable to horny teenage boys who want to see "cosmic hookers"?

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Originally posted by SergeantX:
I can't speak to the particulars of the situation you describe, but in general network executives have proven they have no clue how to market something like Firefly. To them, this translates to the conclusion that Firefly isn't very marketable and therefore not worth the effort. I think it's just part of their system that's broken.

There are two factors that make Firefly a problem for the typical marketing schemes.

One, it's unique. They don't have anything to compare it to and most of them don't get it. Without some roadmap to follow, the only thing they seem to be able to do is pretend it's something else, something they do know how to market. Anyone who saw the original ads for the series saw this. The ads made it out to be a whacky bunch of nuts on a spaceship, with a "cosmic hooker" (unfortunately, that's an actual quote). The problem with this is that the people who do tune in aren't getting what they came for and the ad only manages to turn off most of the people who will appreciate what Firefly has to offer.

Also, Firefly appeals to a broad range of fans. Most marketing strategies these days are centered around the idea of defining a narrow target audience and marketing intensely to their (presumed) preferences. Sci-fi is almost almost always tagged as going for the 18-25 yr old male demographic. The thing is, any of us who've been on this board for long know that the age range of Firefly fans is much broader than that. There are also far more female fans than the typical sci-fi show attracts. From what I've seen, networks can't figure out what ties us all together. They clearly don't feel confident in promoting Firefly as a witty family drama with great character development. Their research tells them people don't want to see that. Their research blows.

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