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New Line Cinemas has gone from a position any studio would love to be in, to being on the verge of one that every studio dreads....
And they've done so in about a month's time.
Just a few weeks ago, Snakes on a Plane, the August release from New Line starring Samuel Jackson (and co-starring the most refreshingly honest movie title in years), was the media darling, the 'sleeper' hit of the summer movie season. Enormous buzz for the movie had spilled over from the Internet, and finally the mainstream media had noticed. Of course, looking back, that may have been the worst thing possible for this film's promotion.
Let it be said, I give New Line a ton and a half of credit for how they have promoted Snakes on a Plane. Basically, New Line realized early on that the community on the Internet was doing a better job of promoting SoaP than the studio could, so New Line went out of their way to encourage the activities. (New Line even went back and re-shot some scenes from SoaP to incorporate dialog that fans had written into trailers they had created for the film.) At a time when the community had more tools than ever to generate their own content, New Line made the brilliant move of letting the fans have the keys to the candystore, and set them loose.
But the key concern all along was that perhaps this was a case of buzz-building too soon for a movie that was still 5-6 months away from release. As the Alexa traffic for Snakes on a Blog, the 'unofficial' fan site for the film suggests here, the buzz for the B-movie appears to be fading. My hope is that the buzz will grow as we get closer to the movie's August release, because I REALLY want to see New Line's embracing of the community be rewarded, but I fear that won't be the case.
As New Line is learning the hard way, perhaps the only thing harder than building buzz for a movie, could be sustaining it.
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Comments
I agree. If you build up the buzz too early, you could lose big. It's sort of like sex, in a way. If you build up your partner to a climax too early, they're going to be in the washroom cleaning up when you're finally ready to deliver.
That's the most scatalogical you'll hear me get for a while :)
Posted by: J.D. Matthews | 05.18.06
Ah we can always count on JD for colorful input ;)
And perhaps this is another example of how much faster everything moves online, as opposed to offline. Perhaps New Line felt that the buzz for SoaP would build slowly for the next 6 months, and peak in August. Instead, it went through the roof, for about a month, then started tailing off just as quickly.
Posted by: Mack Collier | 05.18.06
Good post, Mack. I wouldn't sell the team at New Line short. They are really sharp, and have long used online in smart and innovative ways. My guess is that they'll find a way to right any ship that happens to sink.
Posted by: Ann Handley | 05.18.06
Uh... are you really equating Alexa ratings with marketing analysis?
Did you miss the opening of a few movies this month that put hundreds of millions into the media to get all the attention?
Did you really think SoaP was going to maintain its web heat through the summer blockbusters?
Hint: No one who knows anything about marketing could answer any of these questions with anything but a comfortable "no."
The internet buzz on the movie would not generate as much box ofice as, say, American Haunting. New Line has just begun marketing in earnest. Look at the amount of buzz for the film two weeks after Pirates 2 opens and then if it is non-existant, start questioning strategy.
Posted by: David Poland | 05.20.06
David I think in this case, the Alexa traffic for Snakes on a Blog(which had been more or less the defacto internet touchpoint for hype about the movie) correlates fairly accurately with when the buzz for SoaP took off, and when it seemed to die.
Is Alexa perfect? No and I'm said that several times on the Garden, but at least in this case, it seems to mirror what was actually happening with SoaP's buzz.
And again, I don't think it's a coincidence that as soon as the mainstream media started reporting about the buzz on the internet for SoaP, that the buzz died almost immediately. That's the funny thing....if the MSM sees something as 'cool', it tends to lose its 'coolness' with bloggers.
In this case, a MSM push to REBUILD buzz for a movie that began as the darling of the INTERNET doesn't seem like it's going to work. The only other choice I see New Line having is to try to go back to the internet and rebuild the buzz. I would do that before I would count on a mainstream media push to save the film.
Either way, I wish New Line luck, because they deserve it for the way they embraced the community in promoting SoaP. It's just a sad fact that once you lose buzz, it's almost impossible to get it back, especially in the span of a few months.
Posted by: Mack Collier | 05.20.06