Friday, May 21, 2010

MacGruber: Has the Marketing Convinced You?



The marketing campaign behind the new MacGruber movie has been impressive to say the least. The stars of the movie have been talking it up for a while, Ryan Phillippe hosted Saturday Night Live in promotion of it (because how else would he have been asked to host it?), SNL has still been doing new MacGruber skits each Saturday (even one with Betty White as MacGruber's grandmother), running a twitter account under the handle @grubes69 for a while, some of the characters went on the WWE Monday night show, and just this week the marketing went viral (the buzz word that gives advertising people boners) on the internet with "nude" photos of MacGruber being "leaked" on a site that I frequent called What Would Tyler Durden Do? The result of the campaign for the blogger who runs the site was hilarious after he jokingly bragged that some people had paid him a lot of money for promoting the movie and all of his loyal commenters proceeded to rake him over the coals for being a money whore. I would assure Brendan the heat he is taking is 100% jealousy.
The biggest question for the people who undertook the mass marketing campaign will be if it works. I think they did a good job personally. They took me from a "definitely will not see because I am a cynical assbag" to a "maybe."
Here's a video from Funny or Die of a guy doing a bit during the press junket for MacGruber:



So did the marketing convince or did it go in one ear and out the other? Interesting note: my wife and I vowed a few years ago to never watch a promo or trailer for any Will Ferrell movie ever again because all the jokes were always ruined. We started that promise with the movie Semi-Pro, and I kid you not, we have laughed at all of his movies from Semi-Pro on. It takes a lot of commitment, but I recommend it.

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