H.B.M.C wrote:
I mean just look at the recent bumbling acts of marketing childishness we've seen in just the past year! Iron Man 2. All the trailers, previews, interviews, Comi-Con panels, tie-ins with burger joints and whatnot. None of that should have happened. The real way to market a movie like Iron Man 2 is to not tell anyone you're making it until a week before its release and then BAM, you hit 'em with the movie. You get everyone to sign NDA's that are punishable by forfeiture of all the person's assets and/or the death penalty, you hire hitmen to kill journalists that sneak in to take photos, you threaten local towns with forced sterilisation should they blab that something's filming in their town, and then then you say nothing about the movie at all and, in fact, even go so far as to deny you're making it.
Avatar. Another great example. All that hype about it being the most expensive movie ever made, the genius of the special effects, and so on. James Cameron should have denied he ever intended to make a movie after Titanic and then zzzzzzzzaaaaaaappp, Avatar - Realease Date - 1 week from now!
That's the real way to market. None of this preview/trailer/hype bull gak. You say nothing, you deny everything, and you leave everyone guessing as to what the hell you're doing until you physically are no longer able to.
Think of just how much money Avatar and Iron Man 2 could have made if we'd never known they existed until they were already in theatres? Hundreds more. Possibly even hundreds of billions more. Why is GW the only one who gets this?