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Invisible Advertising: Difference between revisions

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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]].
 
On TV, this is one part of being [[Screwed Byby the Network]]. These are frequently [[Not Screened for Critics]]. Those who actually liked them will be the ones who [[Keep Circulating the Tapes]]. Compare to [[Trailers Always Lie]], when a work is intentionally miss-marketed.
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=== '''Examples:''' ===
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* [[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.
* [[Terry Gilliam (Creator)|Terry Gilliam]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Film)|The Adventures of Baron Munchausen]]'' had only 117 prints made for the ''entire'' US distribution. Gilliam sourly noted at the time that minor arthouse films got 400 prints; the culprit was a regime change at [[Columbia Pictures]].
* ''[[Thirteen (Theatretheatre)|Thirteen]]'' is the theatrical example of this. It didn't have any television commercials, instead relying on a few print ads and internet videos.
* ''[[Delgo (Animation)|Delgo]]''.
* ''[[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.
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** ''[[Ravenous]]'': Very little advertising which also mismarketed it as a teen-oriented horror film.
** ''[[Idiocracy]]'': Zero advertising.
* ''[[Transformers: theThe Movie]]'', ''[[My Little Pony: theThe Movie]]'', and the ''[[GI Joe A Real American Hero]]'' movie ''all'' fell victim to this.
 
 
== Live Action TV ==
* The kiss of death of any series might as well be network promos for a night's block promoting a series with the line "''Then after an all-new (show)...''" with only a quick actor sweep or random scene without any context. Sadly prominent for ''[[American Dad (Animation)|American Dad]]'' these days.
* [[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.]
* Kristin Chenowith's sitcom "Kristin" was only advertised once. It ended up [[Screwed Byby the Network]] after 6 episodes.
* 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.
* The US version of ''[[The Mole (TV series)|The Mole]]'' fell victim to cancellation at the end of Season 5 after ABC's marketing department did so little to promote the show that even many die-hard fans were completely unaware that the show had returned for the first third of the season.
* 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.
* German TV channel Pro7 had only a single trailer for the [[Doctor Who (TV)|Doctor Who]] revival series and showed it a whole week before the premiere just once or twice a day in the afternoon. After that there was no advertising to speak of, they didn´t even care to update their information page for the show when they changed the timeslot after a temporary cancellation. Many fans think that this killed the show.
 
 
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** 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.
** ''[[Metroid: Other M]]'' got another great live-action-CGI commercial and a cool website, but the ads only started running a few days before release. And then Reggie-Fils-Aime asks the fans why they didn't buy it (although the game's mixed reception didn't help, the marketing was clearly a problem as well).
* Sony has hardly marketed the Playstation Move despite the acclaim of the peripheral and wireless gameplay being the latest trend at the moment.
* One of the biggest problems that [[Armored Core (Video Game)|Armored Core]] has is that it is almost never advertised past E3. This has caused the game to be thrown between publishing companies like a spiked ball. To elaborate, the series has been taken up by three different companies after the original dropped it (after Last Raven). Sega picked the series up for 4, only to drop it and for Ubisoft to pick it up. Ubisoft dumped it, and now Bandai has the ball for Armored Core 5.
* [[Namco Bandai]] seems to give absolutely no importance to advertising games of the ''[[Tales Series(series)]]'' in the West. Usually it follows a pattern of localization announcement followed by months of silence, and then a short trailer a week before releasing; and that's it. And they wonder why the series isn't that popular around here. The only titles that were decently advertised were the two ''[[Tales of Symphonia (Video Game)|Tales of Symphonia]]'' games, but Nintendo was probably the one responsible for that.
* [[.hack|Project .hack]] was well-advertised to begin with in the US, but every release after the first game, including the sequel series .hack//G.U., experienced this, in addition to getting the [[Friday Night Death Slot]] if it was an anime other than [[.hack Sign|.hack//SIGNSign]].
* 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.
 
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== 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...
** And on the main [[Cartoon Network]], [[Robotomy]] (aka [[Superjail (Animation)|Superjail]] for kids) was rarely acknowledged until the start of 2011, 3 whole months after its debut.
* Terry Jones' version of ''[[The Wind in Thethe Willows]]''. In America it played on seven screens without advertising - because while Columbia got the theatrical release rights, Disney owned the video rights. (Disney even renamed the film ''Mr Toad's Wild Ride'', after the Disneyland ride.)
* ''[[The Iron Giant]]'' was sparsely advertised initially (and was a miserable flop in theaters), but gained a higher profile on home video.
* This is what led to the failure of ''[[Ka Blam!]]''.
 
 
== Wrestling ==
* ECW was famously [[Screwed Byby the Network]] in this way with TNN refusing to run a single ad for them, giving Paul Heyman ammo for his anti-network rants.
 
{{reflist}}
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