Movie Marketing Madness: Snakes on Plane social marketing
There is a counter-point over at Movie Marketing Madness to Steve Rubel’s post about the marketing campaign for Snakes on a Plane.
I don’t think SoaP will come close to being an all out blockbuster like Pirates was this weekend. Even though the unofficial community marketing has much deeper penetration into online community that community is starting to grow weary. It’s simply a case of this going on too long. Where Pirates coverage was largely confined to official news and mainstream coverage, Snakes has been spreading around the internets for months. That level of interest simply can’t be maintained.
This Google Trends chart has Chris all in a huff.
He has a good point, that social marketing can’t be sustained indefinitely, but I don’t think Rubel was really asserting that Snakes on a Plane was going to as successful as Pirates of the Caribbean. Rubel’s just saying that New Line facilitated the movies fanbase to do all the marketing for them speding next to nothing doing it whereas Disney spent millions plastering Captain Jack on drink cups, bill boards, and other vertical surfaces. If we trust the Goggle Trends chart as a good measure of interest, even accounting for the recent drop in interest, Soap still beats Pirates.
Like Chris says, the ultimate success of the film will depend on all sorts of other variables (like how good it is). However, the Google Trends chart doesn’t project success or even interest in the film. It just measures the level of “conversation” out there and in terms of that, generation of awareness; New Line has something to smile about it. I ultimately don’t think SoaP will do anything near what Pirates does but the take home point is that it is amazing what social marketing can do for a movie about snakes on a motherfucking plane.
July 19th, 2006 at 6:33 pm
First off I’m never in a “huff.” I occasionally give into a “tizzy,” a “tantrum” or even an “outburst” but I don’t think I’ve ever been in a huff. Just want to make that clear.
Whether he was saying it outright (something he never does) or implying it, he was saying SoaP will be as big as Pirates based on that chart. The problem is that Google Trends is..what’s the word I’m looking for…CRAP! It doesn’t actually measure conversations - Technorati does that. It measures searches. There’s a difference. General interest it’s alright at if you discount the fact that people could be searching for the movies in ways that don’t show up on Rubel’s precious chart.
I’ll go back to my deep breathing exercises that relax me after this issue comes up. (10,9,8,7,6…)
July 19th, 2006 at 6:38 pm
Upon further reflection I think the word “snit” most accurately describes my post on this. Yeah, that feels right. A snit.