Serenity & The Bloggers
September 27th, 2005 | Published in Out Loud | 1 Comment
The folks at Universal/Grace Hill Media are getting some props for the fan screenings of Serenity that ran frequently during the summer and the blogger screenings they just completed. I am going to echo these props here, but with an explanatory note for the curious.
These blogger screenings were not special, inspired, or genius—they were simply smart marketing. What Universal did was simply skim off a tiny percentage of the preview tickets they would normally give to local papers and radio stations. Yup, that’s all they did. Instead of winning a contest, you simply entered a first-come, first-serve signup for which you promised to write a review.
So, the studio really did nothing extra beyond suffering through a deluge of emails. There was a nice Universal rep at the theater, he crossed my name off a list, and I was soon waiting in line with everyone else.
This is just really smart Web marketing. They get tons of exposure online in search-engine friendly blogs, for the price of a ticket they were going to give away anyway. You can’t game Google, but you can game the bloggers that feed Google. And in a fair exchange too, I might add.
The best part is that my girlfriend, not an especially rabid fan, has already committed to seeing the movie again, because she wants to support the film and Whedon. So, Universal, you’re getting boku blog love from me, and on top of it all, you’re gonna get my money too.
And that, my friend, is the smartest marketing of all.
September 27th, 2005 at 2:19 pm (#)
Of course, it was pimped as being putting bloggers on the PRESS LIST, not simply getting them in line. And in some cities, the Universal reps abided by this. Here in Portland, however, you simply got put in line with everyone else, which was not how this was promoted via, say, townhall.com or tlakingpointsmemo.com, who got their information from Grace Hill Media, who apparently either misrepresented this, or miscommunicated it to Universal.