Polish the Turd: Difference between revisions

[[File:GoldPoo01.jpg|link=Solid Gold Poop|rightframe]]

'''[[Stanley Kubrick]]''': Sure you can. You just have to freeze it first.|Apocryphal conversation in an editing studio}}

Incidentally, the ''[[Myth BustersMythBusters]]'' have proven that you can indeed polish a literal turd to a high shine without resorting to additional coatings if you dry it, pulverize it, reconstitute it and pat it until very smooth. Bless those boys. There's also that giant shiny golden...thing [[wikipedia:Asahi Beer Hall|on the roof of Asahi Breweries]] in Tokyo. Officially it's named "''Flamme d'Or''", or "Golden Flame" and should represent a "burning heart of Asahi Beer" (even corporate lickspittles[[Lickspittle]]s can be creative... sort of), but '''nobody''' who ever saw the thing has called it anything other than simply "Golden Turd". ThinkGeek also sells tiny golden turds as necklaces.

Note that the special effects industry uses a similar term, "turd polishing", in reference to [[Stylistic Suck|ensuring the high quality appearance of something that is]] ''[[Stylistic Suck|intended]]'' [[Stylistic Suck|to look ugly.]] Therefore, it is not this trope.

** Conversely, in visual media, [[Walking Shirtless Scene|buff men]].

{{quote|'''Male:''' "He's wearing just a loincloth, [[Rated "M" for Manly|but he's killing lots of people]], so [[Armoured Closet Gay|I'm more straight for watching it]].

* [[Crunchtastic|Euphemize, euphemize, euphemize!]] You're not selling a movie ticket, you're selling [[Stock Review Phrases|a riveting, thought-provoking cinematic Tour de Force that will leave you on the edge of your seat!]]<ref>By which we mean it will rivet your jaw open in disbelief; the thoughts it will provoke are "what a terrible movie", "what an incredibly shitty movie", and "No. Just...no."; it's a a tour de force of incredible crap; and it will leave you on the edge of your seat vomiting into your still-full bag of popcorn.</ref> It's not selling white bread, it's potassium-bromate-treated, high-energy LactoFlour produced as per the ancestral Babylonian recipe transmitted from father to son over five millennia (complete with [[All-Natural Snake Oil|all-natural]] Microflora-based leavening agents!), guaranteed to fuel your body for up to eight hours!<ref>By which we mean it's plastic we left in a warehouse in Iraq in 1952 and only just now managed to retrieve thanks to the war. It was in one of Saddam's abandoned nuclear research facilities, so it's technically full of energy. Also, it's been growing mold. ''Bon appetit''.</ref> It's not calorie-laden, it's a great source of energy!<ref>By which we mean that a calorie is a unit of energy--which it is. Not actually being smartasses this time.</ref>

* Use [[Damned By Faint Praise|faint praise]]. For example, "good neighborhood" is real estate jargon for "this house sucks, but it's adjacent to good ones." For food, it's [[Adjacent to This Complete Breakfast]]. Similarly, after the Internet and news media exploded over a bad case of [[Did Not Do the Research]] on FOX's quiz show ''Million Dollar Money Drop'', FOX promoted the show saying "the airwaves and Internet were on fire" and that it was "the most talked-about show of the season."

* Do not use any reviews on the case if reaction has been mixed, or strongly negative (as in "not one reviewer thought it was good").

* Attempt to throw in [[Fauxlosophic Narration|philosophy]].

* [[Get the Sensation]] tactics work especially well with this.

* [[Quote Mine|"Creatively rearrange"]] negative reviews. Mixed reviews work best for this. Keep the positive bits, and edit out the negative comments.

* Use a back-handed compliment. For example, trailers for ''Blind Side'' in 2010 included the quote "Sandra Bullock's best performance ever!".

* [[Take That, Critics!|Turn on the critics]] who panned your show. This almost never succeeds at making the show actually [[Critic Proof]], but the temptation to try it is often irresistible.

* Sound engineer: "You can't polish a turd..." Lighting engineer: "...but you can [[Ke$ha|roll it in glitter]]."

* Bribe a critic to write a good review. A somewhat less controversial alternative is to pay a critic to retract a negative review, or not review it at all... [[Not Screened for Critics|Or just don't let them get hold of it]].

* Say [[He Also Did|"from the creators of" or "from the people who brought you"]] and name a popular and successful title that has creators in common, even if these creators didn't do much more than greenlight the project or write a check for the turd being polished. If truly desperate, try "from the studio that brought you..."

* [[Laugh Track|Laugh Tracks!]]s!

* [[Astroturf|Hire a bunch of puppets to pretend to be ordinary consumers while singing your product's praises in public.]]

* [[Myth BustersMythBusters|Soak it in water and work it with your hands]].

* In fiction, make it a [[Darker and Edgier]] of an existing product.

* When all else fails, [[Blatant Lies|lie outright about the product]].

* Say "it makes a great gift", indirectly admitting that you know nobody wants it for themselves.

* [[Twilight (novel)|Give it a pretentious, one-word title.]]

== [[Comic BooksFilm]] ==

** For a "comedy", put the film's only three funny lines/jokes/quips into the trailer.

** For a generic [[Rom Com]], make the trailer a short montage of the film's young, [[Generic Cuteness|generically-cute]] protagonists exchanging [[Witty Banter|semi-witty lines]] over a candlelit dinner, passionately embracing each other, and gazing dreamily at [[Big Applesauce|the Manhattan skyline]].

** Present it as an entirely different genre in the trailer.

* Make the CGI at least halfway decent, then hope nobody notices the [[Dull Surprise|awful acting]] and/or glaring [[Plot Hole]]s.

** Make it a 3DMovie3D Movie. [[Viewers are Morons|Your audience]] will be so busy marveling at how they're actually in the film that they won't care.

* [[Completely Different Title|Retitle it]] when it goes to DVD to sidestep terrible reviews.

* Retitle it to [[Dolled-Up Installment|make it the sequel to an unrelated film you own the rights to]].

* Retitle it to [[The Mockbuster|suggest a connection to a famous film you don't own the rights to]] (for example, ''Snakes on a Train'').

* Claim that it was "Too [positive adjective here] to show in theaters!" when it goes [[Direct to Video]] because no studio will give it the dignity of a theatrical release.

* Pay Jeff Craig from Sixty Second Preview to say something nice about it...although note that it's {{spoiler|a marketing company, not a review publication}}.

** Sony went the extra mile by creating a ''fake'' critic, [[wikipedia:David Manning (fictitious writer)|"David Manning"]], to attribute marketing-developed quotes to, and eventually agreed to refund customers' tickets for polishing ''[[Hollow Man]]'', Film/''[[The Animal]]'', ''[[The Patriot]]'', ''[[A Knight's Tale]]'', and ''[[Vertical Limit]]''.

** In all fairness, their other [[wikipedia:The Critic|fictional critic]] never said anything nice about movies at all, so it kind of balances out.

* Print "The best film of [the current year]!" on the cover. Don't attribute it. Hope no one notices it isn't actually in quotation marks.

** Print a non-attributed blurb in quotation marks anyway. Hope nobody notices that you're just quoting yourself.

* Do ''not'' [[Not Screened for Critics|let the critics get their hands on it]].

* Hire a [[One-Scene Wonder|big name actor to appear in one short scene]]. Make sure his contract allows you to [[Billing Displacement|give him top billing]].

* An old technique was to shoot TV commercials that featured audience members who had just seen it raving about it.

** ''[[Hot Shots]]'' parodied this with an ad that admitted that its makers were paying off audience members in exchange for raves, which foreshadowed the death of the practice when — as part of the David Manning scandal — it was revealed that Sony had hired actors to play audience members in an ad for ''[[The Patriot]]''.

** Parodied in a 1980s fake commercial from ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'', in which every person who attended a stage hypnotist's Broadway show droned "I loved it. It was much better than ''[[Cats]]''. I'm going to see it again and again" with identical blank stares.

** This is making a reappearance in Australia and the UK.

== MusicLive-Action TV ==

* Sell the "potential" of your <s>cheap</s> young talent.

* Point out the quality of ''[[Opposing Sports Team|opposing]]'' teams coming to your stadium.

* If all else fails, appeal directly to the fans of said opposing teams, offering them the chance to see their boys in your stadium.

* Hit them with the ol' "My city's team, right or wrong." Or just call fans of good players and teams, "front runners."

* A week after the musical ''Subways Are For Sleeping'' opened on Broadway to critical disdain, an ad appeared in the ''New York Herald Tribune'' trumpeting "7 Out of 7 Are Ecstatically Unanimous About ''Subways Are For Sleeping''", quoting rave reviews alongside the names of New York's major drama critics. This ad was the work of the show's producer, David Merrick, who had explored the phone books and found seven men who happened to have [[Name's the Same|the same names]] as the theatre critics. The ''Herald Tribune'' published an apology (other newspapers had perhaps wisely rejected the ad), but what was done was done.

* As pointed out at [[The Other Wiki]], [[Cirque Dudu Soleil]]'s magic show collaboration with [[Criss Angel]], ''[[Criss Angel Believe|Believe]]'', was roundly condemned by critics, so the Luxor (its host casino-resort) website instead quotes [https://web.archive.org/web/20131030074549/http://www.luxor.com/entertainment/entertainment_believe.aspx celebrities who attended the show] — one of whom, Holly Madison, was ''Criss' lover'' at the time it opened.

* Seattle's Greg Thompson Productions is the master of [[Manipulative Editing|creative editing]] and [[Quote Mine|quote mining]]. A critical response such as "It's amazing to me that anyone would consider this entertainment" would be quoted as "It's amazing!" The most [[Egregious]] example of this practice was the promotion for his wife's one-woman cabaret, ''7 Blondes'', [http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/busted-busted-busted/Content?oid=8861 which he was called on by a local paper.]

* Advertise the game using stunning cinematics that are about 500 times better than the graphics you'll be looking at for 99.99% of the actual game.

* Release a demo consisting of the earliest parts of the game, cutting out before your [[Unexpected Gameplay Change|sudden gameplay change]] or early enough to mask that there is almost no variety in the content. Don't want potential customers finding out that [[Disappointing Last Level]] sets in about halfway through Level 2.

* Buy advertising in industry magazines and websites. Even if they don't give you a glowing review in return, the previews will be universally positive and encourage preorders.

* Draw in the fanboys by stating that a few members of the development team of a more popular franchise worked on the game on either the box or the ad copy. It doesn't matter that they only worked for the company for a week or haven't produced a game in 15 years, you've got instant credibility now!

* Promote the game as having original music from a huge rock star, while completely leaving out the fact that only one song in the entire game was composed by him.

* If a game is being released on multiple consoles, advertise and show the features of the more powerful, robust versions. Downplay the differences present on the weaker systems, or don't acknowledge them at all until release. Bonus points for billing the weaker versions as "built from the ground up for" said system.

* Discussed in ''[[Critical Miss (webcomic)|Critical Miss]]'': [https://web.archive.org/web/20160813123521/http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comicsandcosplay/comics/critical-miss/14652-Grey-s-Guide-to-Writing there's always someone] deluded about nature of the thing they produce enough to blame "not enough polishing" no matter what.

* About the ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' episode "The Cloud", ''[[SF Debris]]'' said it was very well performed despite the terrible script. "It's like a four-tier wedding cake made out of shit. It's an incredible achievement, a masterpiece in some respects. But the point that cannot be missed is that it's made out of shit."

* [[Beavis and ButtheadButt-Head|Butthead]]: "You can't polish a turd, Beavis." Except Beavis already has, he keeps it in his dresser.

* One of German TV's most successful...everything (producer, singer, show host, etc.) nowadays is Stefan Raab, who is often said could "aus Scheiße Gold machen"...which is about the German translation of the Trope (literal, "make gold out of shit"). He picks up about any possible concept and makes a fortune with it. Sometimes he also does something that isn't bad to begin with, like Germany's 2010 [[Eurovision Song Contest|Eurovision]] winner.

[[Category:Polish the Turd{{PAGENAME}}]]