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So you've got the job of producing, managing, or marketing something. It could be a consumer product, an album, a film, anything. But whatever it is, it's bad. The concept is fundamentally flawed, the execution is rushed and [[They Just Didn't Care|badly thought out]], and no one in their right mind would buy it on its own merits.
 
Fixing it would require a total overhaul, which you don't have the time or money for, and the higher-ups don't care how terrible it may be, [[Money, Dear Boy|as long as they get their money out of it]]. Of course, you can't just abandon it — too many resources have been sunk into it. Or it might happen that you're in a marketing agency that has been hired to manage promotion, and as lame as that product is it's your ''job'' to make it look good.
 
So what do you do? You try your best to [[Worse Than It Sounds (Darth Wiki)|make it look better than it is]] and hope that it's effective enough to sell a few million copies.
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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.
{{examples|Examples}}
 
== In General... ==
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* Slap an exciting-looking cover on it. [[Covers Always Lie|Relevance to the actual product is optional.]] Make sure [[Stuff Blowing Up|explosions]], [[BFG|big guns]], and [[Sexy Packaging|fanservice]] [[Michael Bay|are prominently featured]]. Reveal as little as possible about the actual plot.
* Claim that [[Stylistic Suck|the suck is stylistic]], [[Parody Retcon|even if it's not]].
* Claim [[What Do You Mean ItsIt's Not for Kids?|it's for kids]]. Especially useful for genre novels.
* [[Fan Service|Babes]]. Put a hot girl in front of a product and you've got a winner. For both sexes.
{{quote| '''Male:''' "Hey, if I buy that body spray, random women will want to have sex with me!"<br />
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{{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]].<br />
'''Female:''' "He's hot." }}
* [[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 phrases like "up to" and "starting at". These are mathematically correct.
* 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."
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** 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|Plot Holes]].
** Make it a 3DMovie. [[Viewers Areare 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.
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** 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]]''.
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== Theatre ==
* 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 [[NamesName'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 Du Soleil]]'s magic show collaboration with Criss Angel, ''Believe'', was roundly condemned by critics, so the Luxor (its host casino-resort) website instead quotes [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.]
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[[Category:The Shades of Fact]]
[[Category:Polish The Turd]]
[[Category:Trope]][[Category:Pages with comment tags]]
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