Ad Hawk: Can There Be Too Much 'Simpsons'?
Posted on: Thursday, 12 July 2007, 06:15 CDT
The promotion: The Web site simpsonsmovie.com, chock full o' all things "Simpsons," promoting the July 27 opening of the film based on the animated TV series.
The pitch: Find everything from ringtones, computer avatars of yourself as a Simpsons character, online games and a business blog "written" by Mr. Burns for JetBlue to the obligatory MySpace page.
The good: A guy could spend hours fooling around on this Web site and not get anything useful done. Homer would be so proud.
I particularly liked how a user could make his own avatar (computer-generated double) using body characteristics from the show. Mine is pictured here, by the way, though my eyes aren't quite so buggy in real life.
The games on the Web site -- Three-Card Moe, Wrecking Ball and Ball of Death -- are good to kill about 15 minutes. But gauging from some of the online scores, some users have played for hours. Maybe an intervention needs to be staged for those people.
The bad: The worst promotion, by far, is the ringtones offer. Talk about a one-note joke. Imagine -- every time your phone rings, you are subjected to Krusty the Clown saying, "Hey, hey, it's your pal Krusty for my new pork sandwich, The Clogger." Arrgh. Much less annoying is the Homer ringtone: "So long, losers."
The manipulative: Gee, whatever happened to the days when movie promotions consisted of a trailer and maybe a fast-food tie-in? "The Simpsons Movie" has raised the bar for marketing savvy (or exploitation). The marketers have even gone so far as to turn selected 7-Eleven stores into Kwik-E-Marts, complete with items found in Apu's store. (Alas, no Duff Beer.)
The Burns blog for JetBlue is equally unprecedented. Burns' advice to JetBlue president David Neeleman: "Mind your profit margins, man. Your rates make a mockery of the corporate greed our great confederacy was built upon. Who taught you to be a robber baron? Mother Teresa?"
The result: I appreciate "The Simpsons" as much as any other guy, but this all-out advertising onslaught is too much. Not that it's going to stop me from seeing the film. Do'h!
Source: The Sacramento Bee
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