Is Internet Publicity a Boon or a Bain?
We have all heard the sayings about publicity:
“There is no such thing as bad publicity.”
“I don’t care what the newspapers say about me as long as they spell my name right.”
“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”
For the most part, in the classical sense of marketing and PR, these have been true. However, in the digital and social media age, does this concept hold true?
For the sake of discussion, let’s say “no” and look at the new 2015 film Fantastic Four or Fant4stic as the marketing team appears to want you to write it given their promotional material.
This film, as of writing this, is bad. Very bad. At least that is what all of the buzz surrounding it is saying. It is currently rated on IMDb as having 3.9/10 by 25,606 users, has a meta score of 27/100 and has a rating of 9% on rotten tomatoes.
Articles have begun to circulate out about the film, attempting to define where it went wrong. Other articles are being published about how it is the worst modern super hero movie ever.
In fact, the internet buzz is so prevailingly negative; the film has started to become the butt of jokes. These are currently all over social media, reddit and other outlets where people lend their voices. Today, 3 of the Yahoo tops stories were related to this film and its apparent awfulness.
Clearly the film is being talked about and is even being made fun of by people that have not seen it.
As it continues in theatres, its domestic gross continues to plummet as people choose to not spend their money on a “bad” film. This seems to support the idea that even though knowledge and buzz around this film is widespread, the fact that the publicity is negative is causing the film to do poorly.
This is made even truer in this modern age where there are internet mobs that can review films, restaurants, books and the like without actually having consumed the offering of the business. Anonymity online allows for people to joke and berate something on a global scale that prior to social media and the internet. They simply could not do and thereby dissuade interest of others.
This is where bad publicity comes to light. Consumers have become increasingly discerning in how they spend their money. Researching an item or service before purchase is very commonplace. Whether it is Yelping a restaurant or reading reviews on a product on Amazon, people are beginning to look to other people and not just marketing to inform their decisions.
Such an implication illuminates the need not only for maintaining good publicity, but very good CRM. In the digital age, suffering negative publicity can reach a tipping point where you can become the butt of jokes and ultimately leads to a loss of profit.
In the end, time will tell if the negatively surrounding this film will reach cult like status such as the famously bad Plan 9 From Outer Space.
