Pirates Embed: Marketing Genius Or Candy For Suckers?
A few days ago, David Poland posted about Disney's launch of a Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End embed for blogs. In his post, Poland remarks that "This is what you call owning the property and building a viral audience while making it easy for both the aggregators and the consumers. This is the future... studios doing what YouTube does and controlling how things are done as they wish. The consumer is getting an equally good product either way." I beg to differ. This is actually what you call giving Disney loads of free advertising. If this is really the future, it's depressing as hell.
While I do agree that this is smart marketing, it is disappointing that Disney is the first studio to take advantage of the raft of blogs out there. Go ahead and do a Technorati search for "Pirates of the Caribbean" and see how many people are using the embed. Sheep, all of them. This film is going to be HUGE and why anyone would put the trailer on their blog for free is beyond me. Is it really that cool? The Prisoner or: How I Planned To Kill Tony Blair? Sure, I'd embed that trailer. Ken Loach's brilliant The Wind That Shakes the Barley? A solid "aye!" Shortbus? Would have done that one, too. Jean Claude Brisseau's Exterminating Angels? Hell yeah, especially if they had a red-banded trailer! But this bit of Disney megaplex candy? Fuck that. Disney can pay me for my bandwidth or they can take a hike.
IMHO, anyone who posts this embed is a sucker.
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Ah, Summer 2007 is only a few days dead, and, fickle bastard that I am, I'm already looking forward to 2008. I can't help it, I'm a child of Jaws and summer tentpole movie entertainment! Read More
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Endorsements Emeritus:
I don't even like typing the D***** word in an artcile on my blog! I hate to mention any of their products (ESPN, ABC, etc.). It is highly inlikely that short of becoming the next Mrs. Johnny Depp, that I would ever promote any of their products.
Well, considering Disney's liberal policies regarding gay rights, I do suppose they might let you marry their Mr. Depp!
;-)
Well, then! If I can get pinged and embedded by Mr. Depp, I will reconsider the template space on my blog!
We'll see how Disney feels when people start doing mash-ups and re-edits of the trailers and posting those. Something tells me Disney won't like it when people start to reappropriate their precious marketing materials.