Marketing Roadmaps

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Big damn auction, big damn movie

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I realized yesterday that if you weren’t interested in charity auctions or Joss Whedon’s Serenity, there wasn’t much on the Roadmap for you this week.

And there still isn’t… although I promise to move onto other topics soon. Maybe next week.

The HP Charity Auction ended last night, and by all accounts a success. The auction itself raised a little less than $10,000, and with HP’s matching funds, each charity (DATA and the American Red Cross) got more than $9,000. HP will be publishing a webpage with all the details, and when I get the link, I’ll post it.

Everyone involved learned a lot in the process, from both our mistakes and the things that went well. One thing that is absolutely critical is to allow enough time for viral marketing to work. It takes time for messages to spread into an audience of any size, even if you do billboards and primetime TV ads. You need even more time for a grassroots message. The good news, though, is once it takes hold, it *does* snowball. Our example without a doubt is how fast the word spread in Elijah Wood’s fanbase about the auction.

And speaking of grassroots marketing …. the Big Damn Movie is in general release today. I’m going tonight, more on it tomorrow, but I promise, no spoilers.

And then maybe I’ll write about something else 🙂

Serenity and grassroots marketing

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About a week or so ago, I posted about the Joss Whedon movie Serenity as an example of how customers can effect change, when they care enough AND somebody is actually listening. The post also was my submission to this week’s Carnival of the Capitalists.

As a fan of Firefly, I have been impatiently waiting for the film that continues the story just like any other fan. And as a marketer, I have been observing the grassroots and viral marketing efforts with great interest over the past year. I’ve even done my share of fan conversions. For the uninitiated, that’s when you loan your Firefly DVDs to a “virgin.”

Shortly after I wrote my post, as we got ever closer to this Friday’s general US release, the media – both mainstream and blogosphere – effectively exploded. The LA premiere generated a great deal of press, as did the rounds of interviews director Whedon and the cast are doing to promote the movie. I won’t list it all here, but you can find most of the coverage on the site Whedonesque.

Not surprisingly, given the grassroots and viral campaigns already in play, the studio (Universal) decided to approach bloggers directly. Among the bloggers they contacted with their offer for a free advance screening provided they agreed to blog about the movie, good or bad, was the Instapundit . Definitely the way to spread the word fast..   

In fact, three marketing blogs that I read on a fairly regular basis wrote about the offer, each with a slightly different take and what it means longer term. I’ve commented at all three, and won’t rehash all the discussion here, other than to recommend you read the posts, and all the comments.

As one of the commenters on the gapingvoid post pointed out, planned or merely unintended consequence, the free advanced screenings reached well beyond the fanbase.

The best post about the whole thing however was from a blog I hadn’t read before, New Persuasion   (again I tip my hat to Whedonesque for the link). The author of the post Nellie Lide actually was “confirmed” for one of the blogger screenings but chose not to go because she didn’t like the way the publicity firm handled the whole thing. Reading some of the language they used in their emails, I can definitely see why bloggers might be put off by it (notably too much use of the word MUST). And perhaps the PR firm didn’t handle it as well as they could have.

But I still stand by my opinion that no one was forced to do anything. It was a choice whether to accept the terms of the offer: get into a free advance screening of a much-anticipated movie in exchange for blogging about it. Or not.

Yes, the language the PR firm used was a bit strong and controlling. But, if you didn’t like the terms, don’t accept. Nellie Lide didn’t accept. Others did. (Although I do imagine it was easier to resist if you’d already seen the film than if you hadn’t.)

We will make mistakes … all of us … as we try to integrate new media into existing models. It is inevitable. But I’d rather try something new and perhaps make a mistake than never be willing to try. For that alone, I commend the team behind the blogger screenings –they tried something new. And hopefully, they learned from whatever mistakes they made. As I hope to when I make mine.

By Friday, this will all be moot anyway, as Serenity will be in general release. According to Whedonesque this morning, tickets are now available on movietickets.com.

See you at the movies. And "aim to misbehave."

Serenity, HP Charity Auction

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Just a couple of housekeeping things.

First, a reminder that the Joss Whedon film "Serenity" goes into general release this coming Friday September 30th. Whedon did an interview in today’s NY Times (tip of the hat to Whedonesque and warning, spoilers). You can find many links to other articles on Whedonesque.

Second, the HP charity auction that I did a fast viral campaign for ends this Thursday, September 29th. While some fan bases have bid certain photos into the stratosphere (Bono at the Super Bowl and Elijah Wood), there are some bargains still to be had, especially if you were thinking of buying an HP Photo Printer anyway.

HP Charity Auction Update

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Well, it is certainly true that some fandoms are more active than others. In the space of a day, the Elijah Wood fans had bid his photo from its starting bid of $99 to more than $300.

Our thanks go out to all the fan sites, blogs and Yahoo! Groups list owners that responded to our email with a post to their members.

And a personal thank you from me to my marketing/PR colleagues who have blogged about the auction so far: Elisa Camahort of Worker Bees, Jill Fallon of the Business of Life, Yvonne Divita of Lip-Sticking, Toby Bloomberg of Diva Marketing, Wayne Hurlbert of Blog Business World, and Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz who covered it on the 19 September For Immediate Release podcast.

I learned this week that the photo of Kate Hudson and Kurt Russell is actually a personal photo taken by director Cameron Crowe during the Festival, which means it won’t be available anywhere else but this auction. The picture and the printer are autographed by all three of them. This really would be a special gift for a fan of either actor. If someone wanted to buy it for me, that would be fine too 😉

Seriously, even if you have no desire to own an autographed picture and printer, these photos are really suberb, and it’s fun to see how the stars signed their names. Check out Alan Cumming and Richard E. Grant in particular. You have to click on the slide show, roughly in the middle of each auction page, to see the autographs.

HP Charity Auction on Ebay