Is Viral Marketing for Movies Overrated?
If you were one of the many who helped make ‘2012’ into the weekend’s box-office champ, you may have gone to see the film despite, rather than because of, its viral marketing campaign, whose seemingly real end-of-the-world alarmism may have sent more people scurrying to hide in their basements than out to the theaters. That’s often the problem with gimmicky viral marketing stunts for movies, according to an article in The Guardian: for people who aren’t already clued in to the movie’s plot, these campaigns tend to be more deceptive and scary than enticing. The case of ‘2012’ points out the perils of such stunts: they make sense if you’re familiar with the content of the movie or TV show they’re secretly promoting, but for the vast majority who are unfamiliar, they may cause panic. For the apocalyptic disaster movie (starring John Cusack, pictured), Columbia Pictures launched a Web site for the (fictional) Institute for Human Continuity, whose warnings of imminent planetary doom prompte
