[ Thursday, October 06, 2005 ]Desperate marketing?Starbuck [17:46] Comments: 7 [] A strange thing happened whilst sharing a pint of Abbot Ale with the Missus last night. Whilst we were deep in conversation sitting alone in a small-town pub, some bloke came over and sat himself down at our table. He made some very small small-talk about where we came from - I could hardly hear him anyway, and had to keep asking him to repeat himself - and then almost subliminally threw into his chat - "Have you seen Revolver yet?" Before I had the chance to riposte, offended, "No, its meant to be one of the shitest films of all times", he moved the "conversation" onto something else and then wandered off. We didn't quite know what had hit us. And then I wondered whether this was some sort of viral marketing. The give-away was the word "yet". Remembering a character (Magda) in William Gibson's Pattern Recognition who was employed to sow the initial seeds of "cool" about new artistic phenomenon amongst the trend-setters. She would "look sorted, go to clubs and wine bars and chat people up. While I'm at it, I mention a client's product, of course favorably." That way the micro-meme can be spread, good word of mouth amongst the "movers and shakers" being more valuable than anything in marketing. Eventually these people would be claiming to each other to have seen something that was still a marketing dream. Apart from the Bear & Ragged Staff is not exactly Covent Garden. And this guy was far from being a hip young thing like Magda. The ugly bastard. 7 Comment(s):
Comment by
Yes it is reminiscent of Pattern Recognition isn't it.
Comment by
i want to know if you were using straws.
Comment by You know. A funny thing happened to me on Wednesday night. I was in this drinker -- I was a bit worse for wear - when I stumbled into this table and this young couple were looking daggers at me. The man looked a bit like Guy Richie, so I says..."Have you seen Revolver yet." After that. It's a bit of a blur.
Comment by
You're all mad, the lot of you!
Comment by You'll find an interesting article on the marketing of Revolver on the media part of the Guardian site (I originally read the story in Private Eye) - I'd put a link but you need to register for the media part of the site.
Comment by Stuart - can't you cut and paste it on to your blog and we can all visit you?
Comment by
Max, Stuart is in fact one of my two co-editors (if indeed this is the right Stuart). VSX is made up of myself, Stu & DJ Tim. Stu's much less prolific than myself. And DJ Tim is much less prolific than Stu. Neither of them come from the future, and neither of them were in a band called "Viper Squad Ten". Just so you know. [ Click HERE for the VSX front-page... ] |
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