Invisible Advertising: Difference between revisions

This often happens when [[Executive Meddling]] slams headfirst into a creator who really, really wants to create the work he wants without interference, but is too green to have [[Protection From Editors]].

 

----

=== '''Examples:''' ===

* [[George Lucas]] was afraid 20th Century Fox would do this to the original ''[[Star Wars]]'' film, a.k.a. ''[[A New Hope]]'', so he secured the merchandising rights in the hopes that he could promote the movie if they didn't. 20th Century Fox happily handed them over, wondering [[It Will Never Catch On|why on earth he wanted the worthless merchandising rights]] instead of more money up front.

* Tom Laughlin, the director/star of ''[[Billy Jack]]'', was able to win distribution rights back from the original company when he realized they were doing this. He then started one of the first examples of saturation advertising and made it a hit.

* ''[[Slither]]''. Universal hardly promoted the film despite its critical acclaim and later tried to blame the film's failure on the director for not making it more accessible.

** It happened again on the director's follow-up ''Super''. After IFC spent over a million to buy the rights, they sat on it and only released a trailer four weeks before opening. Other than a few posters, there was almost no marketing on the film and it died in limited release (also some theatres won't play it due to it being unrated, as the director and studio expected an NC-17 rating). Basically, James Gunn seems to be a lightning rod for this trope.

** ''[[Ravenous]]'': Very little advertising which also mismarketed it as a teen-oriented horror film.

** ''[[Idiocracy]]'': Zero advertising.

 

 

== Live Action TV ==

* [[Adult Swim]] ran a show called ''[[wikipedia:Paid Programming chr(28)TV serieschr(29)|Paid Programming]]'' at 4:30 am on without any on-air acknowledgment. It's like it was specifically designed to confuse viewers. If that's the case, [http://boards.adultswim.com/t5/General-Comedy-Discussion/Icelandic-Ultrablue/m-p/52005827 it worked.]

* Let's not forget ''[[Police Camera Action]]'' and ''[[Police Stop]]'' - which were barely advertised at the time. Ironically, the likes of ''World In Action'', ''The Cook Report'' and ''[[Coronation Street]]'' got a mention. But they were still popular...

* Once ''[[Dollhouse]]'' started airing the second season, the only way to see any promos for the show were minutes before the episode aired.

* [[The WB]] was particularly bad about this for some shows, [[Jack and Bobby]] was hardly advertised at all until near the end of the season, by which point it was too late for the ratings to recover enough to avoid cancellation. ''[[For Your Love]]'' on the other hand somehow managed to last for 4 years despite rarely getting much in the way of advertisement.

* ABC did the same with ''Million Dollar Mind Game'' in 2011, which was thrown into their Sunday afternoon Pit of Doom to be killed by the NFL games on the other networks.

 

 

** Live action commercials were made for ''Super Metroid'' (in both the US and Japan - with the Japanese commercial boasting then-impressive CGI, and strangely populated near-entirely by caucasians), ''[[Metroid Prime]]'' and ''Metroid Fusion'' (with surprisingly high-quality CGI, the former game's commercial even playing in some movie theaters at the time). ''[[Video Game Remake|Zero Mission]]'' had some ads as well. But the ''Prime'' sequels had limited advertising, which considering how the original was an extreme critical and financial success, it's odd that Nintendo would choose to lower the development time and advertising budget of it's sequel, practically gave up on it's highly-anticipated (and for the Wii's then-current library, much needed killer app) sequel's advertising, and then fumbled so much for the main series' attempted revival. What is wrong with Nintendo's marketing department?

** The highly-anticipated [[Compilation Rerelease]] ''Metroid Prime Trilogy'' received '''no TV and highly-limited internet advertising'''. Clearly, this high-quality release, packaged as a collector's edition at a great price and very anticipated by fans, was not worth promoting. It was lucky to have a website.

* Sony has hardly marketed the Playstation Move despite the acclaim of the peripheral and wireless gameplay being the latest trend at the moment.

* A certain MMORPG called [[Fly FF]] is slowly dying out, partially because of this and partially because of ...interesting decisions being made by its developers and host.

 

== Western Animation ==

* Numerous shows on [[Adult Swim]] are put on the schedule without actually being advertised, especially anime; They're getting a bit better about it, though. On the other hand, on April 18, 2008, a show (''[[Rising Son]]'', a spoof of [[Soap Opera|Soap Operas]] focusing on the life of [[Jesus]]), premiered at ''5 o'clock in the morning''. Without any announcement of any kind except for the title appearing on the schedule. It was bad enough when they moved their new anime to 5 a.m. without advertising it...

* ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' was sparsely advertised initially (and was a miserable flop in theaters), but gained a higher profile on home video.

 

 

== Wrestling ==

 

{{reflist}}