Unless your blind you’ve probably noticed the “I Hate Sarah Marshall” ads that are all over the place as part of the campaign for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. There have been tons of outdoor ads in Chicago, San Francisco (according to Jeremy Pepper) and, I would imagine, most other major cities as well.
As you can see from these pictures, the posters – which I’ve also seen as taxi-top and bus-side ads – contain a message to Sarah Marshall like “I’m SO over you Sarah Marshall” or “My mom always hated you Sarah Marshall” or my personal favorite “You DO look fat in those jeans Sarah Marshall.” Because women’s insecurities never stop being funny.
Unfortunately the outdoor ads are just part of this. There’s also a blog by the character, played by Jason Segal in the movie, who’s just been dumped by Marshall, who’s played by Kristen Bell. At IHateSarahMarshall.com you can see all sorts of hurt feelings being expressed by the dumped loser. And it’s not just a blog. He’s also recording audio podcasts, he’s uploading pathetic looking pictures to Flickr and he’s got his own YouTube channel for his pathetic whining.
The biggest problem with this is that it gets social media completely wrong.
First off, it’s a character blog. Now even I don’t always hate fake character blogs, but I’ll make an exception for this one. My biggest problem with it is that the posts seem to exist after the events of the movie. Or maybe it’s actually placed in the middle of the movie. I’m not sure exactly but I’m pretty sure this isn’t something like the Cloverfield campaign where this stuff is leading up to that fateful day.
But the blog, which is supposed to be by this character, features a profile picture that’s obviously a movie still. That crosses the boundary between fiction and non and that’s bad when you’re asking for a suspension of disbelief.
The blog also has no comments allowed. As Bill points out that’s a fantastic way to stop fake comments on your fake blog.
The second major mistake it makes is that it references other components of the campaign in a way that, again, completely defies reality. He says in one post that he spent a lot of money to buy all those outdoor ads we’ve been seeing. I don’t know what he does for a living but an ad buy of this size is going to run a few million easy.
Plus, while he might have included the URL of his blog in the ads, I’m doubtful that someone who’s just taking out an ad for the sake of being vengeful would include an MPAA rating. Call me crazy but that just doesn’t seem likely.
So you’ve got a deceitful campaign that can’t even be consistent in how it’s trying to pull the wool over the audience’s eyes. Fantastic.
I have two requests for everyone: First, please stop calling this campaign “viral.” It’s not. The URL is right there, even if it is in small type. Viral brings with it some sort of expectation that you have to go looking for it and this one doesn’t qualify.
Second, if this is the best a studio can do in terms of social media then Steve Hall is completely right: Marketers have no place in this space. Let the public relations people who actually know this stuff do it. This is too intensive on brand messaging and intrusion and it’s just kind of painful to watch. Just stop. Bring someone in who knows how to do this in a non-offensive manner or just don’t do it.
The thing is I like the rest of this campaign, especially the trailers. But this effort falls well short on a number of fronts.
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