Mxy, I've never doubted word of mouth. I've said here before that it is a good promoter. I seriously doubt that people just wind up at the movies aimlessly and randomly pick a film to watch. There's a reason why big budget movies do tens of millions of dollars in box office takes in just three days. Word of mouth about how good a film somebody's seen isn't that damn good. Word of mouth will sustain a film over the duration of its run, but the ad campaign gets the asses in the seats to generate that word of mouth.
1) 67% of all consumer decisions are primarily influenced by word of mouth
2) 1 out of every 7 social conversations are word of mouth based
3) Only 3.4% of face to face word of mouth conversations are stimulated by a marketing organization's promotional efforts
4) 90% of customers identify word of mouth as the best, most reliable and trustworthy source about ideas and information on products and services
5) 44% of consumers claim to avoid buying products that overwhelm them with advertising
6) Where does word of mouth happen? Answer: Everywhere.
7) On product recommendations, 90% trust their spouse and 65% trust their friends, however only 27% trust manufacturers, 14% trust advertisers and 8% trust celebrities
And so on and so on.
And so on seems to include:
Quote:
9) 44% of Americans put stock in a mass advertised brand, only 17% of Canadians do
That survey itself shows that advertising does work. You can't compare the marketing campaign of a car or a vacuum cleaner to that of a movie. They're totally different animals. Movies work on a smaller window, so the ad campaign is fundamental to get attention. Once a film has left the theaters, you kinda forget it until you see the ads for the DVD.
Borat had a huge ad campaign behind it before the distributor got scared and reduced the release. The buzz about it had generated a great deal of anticipation. Fuck, look how much buzz the online marketing for the new Batman film has got people talking.
Now, I also won't confuse marketing with quality. There is only so much that can be done for a turd of a film; but if there is something good there, then a good marketing campaign will capitalize on it. Miami Vice had a huge marketing campaign behind it, but you could see in those commercials that it was a shit film. This is why I say that a good JLA movie minus Supes/Bats could do well with a marketing campaign that shows how good or action packed it can be. The ad campaign can define the audience's expectations much like the X-Men trailers defined the lack of crazy colored spandex costumes (because, let's face it, that's what people think when they think of superheroes).
whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules. It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness. This is true both in politics and on the internet."
