Why So Serious?
I love everything about a clever marketing campaign surrounding a movie, The Simpsons Movie started last year off for extremely well done marketing (the movie, not so good) and one of Cloverfield’s many viral campaign’s (Widget where people could embed the trailer on their blogs, MySpace, Facebook, etc. and if their widget was grabbed the most, they won a special screening of the movie, along with several websites) was a huge success (over $40 MM at the box office). I am seeing this movie this weekend.
The newest campaign I learned about has been under sad conditions. I just started paying attention to “The Dark Knight,” but for nine months, comic book geeks and Batman movie fans have been interacting with a web marketing campaign to “slowly unveil the new look for one of Hollywood’s most popular characters: the Joker.”
The viral campaign came out last May. Websites, thegothamtimes and thehahahatimes came out along with an online scavenger hunt.
With the death of the Joker, Heath Ledger, will the marketing change? According to a Wall Street Journal article, no it should not.
“The best thing that could happen is that all this marketing stuff just goes on and the movie and the campaign don’t turn into some kind of weird grave marker.”
Will his tragic death just turn into a marketing ploy? Should they studio continue their marketing as they have been or change it to not be seen like they are trying to capitalize on the death?