FILM: War of the Worlds

Marketing Malarkey

Marketing has come a long way since it was first used to tweak the nipple of the masses and have them squealing with delight. But the movies seems to be one area where the supposed sharpshooters occasionally still miss the mark.
One such example is the current War of the Worlds campaign. Let me give you a bit of background to set the scene. As someone who works on a lesser-known sci-fi magazine, it's hard enough to get into screenings as it is. Shouting "Don't you know who I am?" doesn't work if they don't know who you are. Anyway, our next issue comes out on June 30 and we went to press on Friday. That short time to press means if we could get a review in at the last minute we'd have the drop on our competitors who go to press much sooner. Since War of the Worlds comes out in cinemas on July 1, I was confident there'd be a screening in time. Repeated calls and messages to the PR office didn't put me off (I've found that PRs rarely go out of their way to get back to you - it's not like it's their job to promote something. Oh wait, it is!).

But when I did finally get a response it was a hurried call to say there wouldn't be a screening of WOW (whatever you do don't call it WotW, that's guaranteed to get their back up) until three days before it opens in cinemas. My reaction? I put the phone down and announced to the office that "War of the Worlds is shit". What other explanation could there be for screening it for the press at such short notice?

So it was with a bit of a snigger that I read in one of this weekend's tabloids (sorry to be vague, but it was open in the Chinese restaurant while I was waiting for takeout) that the WOW marketing people are really annoyed. It seems that word of mouth has decided their Cruise/Spielberg money-making machine won't be worth the price of a ticket. Who says marketing doesn't work?