Well here goes my first post on my very own blog. I suppose it was only a matter of time. And my first post is inspired by the latest alien body snatcher movie The Invasion. But I'm not here to tell you how good or bad I thought the film was...though I can say I am glad I saw a free screening and didn't actually have to pay...and I am pretty sure the 21% tomatometer speaks for itself. This post is about a missed opportunity by the movie marketers. So here is the deal -- people in the movie start acting, well, not themselves, and Nicole Kidman uses her detective/psychiatrist skills to do some investigating. And where to all the bestest detectives go? Google of course. So when a patient uses the phrase "my husband is not my husband" Kidman sends the googlebots out to find out what's going on -- turns out other people -- all over the internet are saying "my husband is not my husband," (probably a phrase Kidman used herself after ex Tom Cruise found Scientology) "my wife is not my wife, "my son is not my son" and so on, you get the point.So with an opening weekend less than $6 million, I feel confident saying something about this movie could have been marketed better. So here's the pitch, my grand idea; before The Invasion was released why not fill the online landscape with some people claiming "their loved one wasn't their loved one." Why not start some blogs, not blatantly tied to the movie, where people were asking for help. Why not some videos on YouTube with desperate wives, husbands, and children seeking help because "person x is not my person x." Maybe even some MySpace pages. Who knows. My only point is that the opportunity for a cheap attempt at a viral campaign was there for the taking. When I got home from the movie, I Googled the phrase and was surprised to find nothing related to the film. So in my humble opinion, missed opportunity to use the interweb to help market the film.
3 comments:
Cool idea. It sounds like it wouldn't make the movie any better, but an amazing tie-in and would get people in the door.
A very good point, Adam. A year later now, I am watching the movie on HBO, and (trying) to get some work done on the laptop, and immediately did a search for the phrase.
I had two funny results, but to make a long story short, you were one of 41 results for the exact phrase, and only three or four of those results were actually related to the movie. I am now working on a post on my own blog in order to work on being number 42.
Ditto to day dreamer, I too watched the film last night and today googled the phrase that Nicole did and came up with 43 hits rather than the 1.8m she did. Poor film but liked the link to Veronica Cartwright appearing in this film in the same way that Kevin McCarthy appeared in the 1978 remake.
Silliest moment was the adrenaline in the heart administered by an eight year old through Nicole's cardigan. Now I'm fifty and I can't even put a band aid on without it getting stuck.
Chz
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