Things (like brand awareness) likely to be lost in the move
So here’s a question I was pondering a bit the other day: What is J.J. Abrams going to lose when he reveals the actual name of his mystery film about some apocalyptic event and the New York partiers caught up in it?
Right now, and practically since the first rumors surfaced, the movie has gone by a couple of code names. Cloverfield is the most prominent, though some refer to it by the release date that appears in the trailer and serves as the web address, 1-18-08. A few people use Slusho, the name of a company that plays some sort of role in the movie’s plot, but not many. For the most part the movie right now is Cloverfield and if you use that in conversation people will know what you’re talking about. This Google Trends search bears that out.
But when Abrams reveals the movie’s actual name (assuming it isn’t one of the above) out discourse will change. Mentions of Cloverfield or whatever will drop off and mentions of Title X will pick up. That could result in a lot of lost “Google Juice†for the movie as writers switch over to the new title. There will be a brief period of “Title X, formerly known as Cloverfield†but after that, at least theoretically, Cloverfield will drop off the map.
It’s more or less a given that Abrams has another title in mind for the movie and speculation is running he’ll announce it sometime in mid-December. That’s based largely on a video on one of the websites related to the movie that mentions a present being unwrapped in that time period. But right now I think that sticking with Cloverfield is a no-lose situation.
In addition to the potential lose of Google Juice, I just don’t think he’s going to come up with a better title. I don’t mean that as a knock on Abrams. Instead I simply mean that anything like “Monstrous†(one of the rumored titles) is way too on-the-nose for a movie that’s been wrapped in so much mystery and speculation. Cloverfield is nice and ambiguous and, thanks to the brand association that already exists in the minds of the audience, fairly creepy in and of itself.
Right now I think the concerns over branding are largely confined to the online world. Aside from a few stories right after the trailer debut in the entertainment and marketing trade press the movie hasn’t, I don’t think, received a lot of mainstream print coverage. That’s both a good and a bad thing. Good because it means Paramount is free to release a more traditional marketing campaign that will hit a relatively blank-slate audience. Bad because that means the name change is going to have the biggest impact on the online denizens who have been mulling this movie over for months now.
This is, of course, an academic exercise. Abrams will change the name at some point and we’ll all just have to deal with that. But this is the danger with unnamed mystery projects – they’re given code names by the audience that becomes burned into their minds. Changing it later brings with it the potential for people being let down,
But that’s something Abrams and Paramount will have to deal with.
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p.s. The long-term (read: franchise) view pretty much trumps any reservations about making working titles obsolete. This assumes that the movie is good enough to warrant a sequel(s), but you can bet they’re proceeding under that assumption. Also, the video/present/December unwrapping/title idea of yours is flawed.
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You can’t really call a monster (what the movie is about) Cloverfield, and while there’s no rule written in stone, there’s a logic to naming your monster movie after its monster. You can also give your original monster a truly unique name, which will instantaneously give your movie title all the google juice it will ever need. As for the impact on online denizens, I don’t follow that exactly you’re meaning to suggest. The way I figure it, they’ll be the first to adapt. There’s also the bonus of your movie being known by its release date. So while you’re right that “Cloverfield” wins the name recognition game, I think your screenshot isn’t giving “1-18-08″ its due. Hard to tell, but I think maybe your “quotes” are interfering with the results. See: http://www.google.com/trends?q=cloverfield%2C+1-18-08%2C+slusho%2C+tagruato&ctab=0&hl=en&geo=all&date=2007&sort=0