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Posted in: Movies, Recent Updates | Tagged: lily collins, mirror mirror, tarsem singh
Oh Dear, Oh Dear: Mirror Mirror Marketing Team Resorts To Astroturfing To Sell Tickets
Well well well, what's going on here then? Thanks to some stellar detective work on the part of Trevor Anderson over at Movie Mavericks, it has come to light that four very passionate fans are very much looking forward to seeing Tarsem Singh's Snow White adaptation Mirror Mirror. So much so that they decided to leave some comments on film blogs about how much they're looking forward to it:
Lana – Julia Roberts is going to be awesome as the Evil Queen. She's such a good actress!
Rebecca – Definitely seeing this with my boyfriend! Can't wait to see Lily Collins in action!!
Sam – I loveeee Armie Hammer! So good in Social Network and now he's going to be so good in this.
Charlie – Tareem Singh makes awesome movies. Immortals was amazing and this will be too.
What's so special about that? "Lana", "Rebecca", "Sam" and "Charlie" left the exact same comments on at least a dozen different websites with posts about the new trailer, including Collider, Screen Rant and The Playlist. I'm quite offended that our article didn't get hijacked as well.
Welcome to the world of astroturfing, the marketing technique of posing as members of the viewing public to create the impression of unbiased grassroots support for a film. IMDb boards in particular are a breeding ground for astroturfing, so the next time you see a thread entitled "This movie is going to be AMAZING!" you should probably think twice about who might have written it. In this case the comments seem to have been set up on an automated system to post underneath any article related to the trailer.
Perhaps in other cases I'd write this off as a case of a fan doing some pro bono astroturfing for the film, but Relativity Media have long been in a marketing battle as they fought to outperform Universal Pictures' Snow White and the Huntsman. During production both studios pulled forward their release dates in an attempt to get their film out first, a risky move that has left them both with a shortened post-production schedule.
If the comments were created by a member of the marketing team, it's a pretty poor job. They posted the same four comments on each post, misspelt Tarsem Singh's name, and in general created an impression that the only people interested in seeing the movie were drooling idiots. In fact, I'm beginning to suspect this might be a genius method of sabotage from the Universal camp.
Mirror Mirror is set for release on March 16th 2012. You should go and see it, I hear Tareem Singh makes awesome movies and that Julia Roberts is going to be awesome as the Evil Queen.
Comments:
Bob
OMG this article is great I looooooove Bleeding Cool and Hannah is da greatestAmanda
I can always rely on u guys 4 top notch journalism very well researched..Consuela
Can't WAIT for the next article btw Brendon is fit tell him to add me on facebookTim
LIKE LIKE LIKE I'm sooo tweeting about this rite now!!
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