Dear Walt Disney Corporation,
Not that anyone asked for my opinion, but speaking not only as a communications professional but as a life long ubber-maxi-zoom-dweebie-geek of the first order who watched, listened to and read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy more times than I care to remember – you’re marketing of the film version of said property is in a word… awful.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve been watching and re-watching the trailer all week and it looks perfect. The team behind it seems to have captured the late Douglas Adams’s warped sense of humor. Everything looks wonderful – just right and just as it looked in my head when I read the books or listened to the radio series.
Except for the fact that there’s this built in audience for this movie and no one seems to know it’s coming out in two months.
Compare this to another hot geek-community property – The Lord of the Rings. The day New Line announced the films were moving forward everyone who ever read the books seemed to know it was coming. New Line and the production team went out of their way to reach out to the fan base, stoking fan interest through fan sites, meeting the fans right where they lived, energizing them and nurturing them through the long two years the films were in production.
I’m aware of a fairly active network of fan sites but where did you choose to debut the trailer? On Ain’t It Cool? Or Planet Magrathea? Nope – it debuted on Amazon because as we all know, most Hitchhikers Guide fans hang out on Amazon.com. And when those sites tried to put up an early copy and stills they recieved a carefully worded Cease and Desist letter. Nice touch guys.
And the trailers … you can’t download to them or even get a direct link to the files themselves. Would be nice to send an email to a friend and say ‘here’s what we’re doing on April 29….’
Here’s a clue – you have a built-in audience of tens of millions of people who read and loved these books and will go see the movie on the day it comes out no matter what the reviews or word of mouth is. But unless you reach out and engage them – just like New Line and Peter Jackson did for Lord of the Rings – most of them will not even know the movies are coming out and those who do might just feel like you’re taking their favorite property and cheapening it for the mass audience.
You know where to find me….
UPDATE: I’m entitled to change my mind, aren’t I?
Technorati tags:{The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy}
