"Before my friends and I watched the video from The Ring in my mom’s living room the most exciting thing that happened to me was I got to give a speech at eighth grade commencement. So thank you, DreamWorks marketing team circa early-2000’s. Thank you."
Uhhh You're Welcome! Awesome!. I did this. Well, I was one of the people on the team that did it. My first job out of college was working at this tiny marketing firm where we did projects like this for movies and records and video games and so on. So strictly speaking it wasn't the DreamWorks marketing team, it was like three or four 22-year-olds in a small office in lower Manhattan. Man, nothing has made me feel this old since I realized that I actually like and recognize most of the music they play between segments on NPR. Sadly, that was yesterday.
Working at this job totally ruined my brain, because it made me think every single thing was some type of marketing, but I did think this project was pretty cool. After a while though, you suspect every piece of street art is marketing. Every blog post. Even when a stranger comes up to you in a bar, you're like, "who is paying this person to talk to me and why?"
The video got to be on top of Liz's car thanks to our network of street teams (read: a list of email addresses of kids who would occasionally respond to offers to do odd jobs for twenty bucks, and then occasionally actually do them). Although, strictly speaking, this person fucked up because the videos were supposed to be nonchalantly left around on chairs in cafes or places where they would seem plausibly mislaid, not stuffed under windshield wipers. The "street teams" were supposed to do whatever the thing was and then send us pictures of it so we could send the proof back to Dreamworks, but they always slacked off. At least you actually saw the video. I just found the old spreadsheet of the street team in my email for this. There were two street team members marked 'paid' on this project in Connecticut. One at Yale, one at Fairfield. Which 'local college' did you see this show at?
There were a whole lot of other parts to this campaign besides just the videos. I can't remember all the details, but I remember we made these "LOST VIDEO PROJECT - REWARD" flyers, with a mysterious still on them, and we had the street team kids put those up on telephone poles and stuff, and we were hoping people would both find the video, and connect it with the flyers, and post one or the other on different websites and stuff. There was also some sort of slow reveal of the whole plan, like there was a cryptic URL at the end of the video or something and the page was just a teaser that eventually got updated with a trailer or something. There was also some kind of a contest, and possibly a bunch of interlocking websites or fake conspiracy sites about the videos. We did a lot of fake websites, generally, like we'd make shitty geocities pages with people speculating about some mystery or another and linking to one another and quoting each other, arguing, etc. except it was all fake. It was actually really confusing to keep it all straight.
It was pretty funny though, after we sent all the videos out, to monitor forums and stuff at people's schools that had people speculating about the video and so on. It wasn't like I LOVE BEES or anything, everyone pretty much figured it out right away, but they at least posted the questions on their school's forums. I think there may have been different phases, where the videos either did or did not have a Dreamworks logo at the end that pretty much told you exactly what was happening, or maybe that was just something we argued about (like we argued about whether or not kids could be expected to have VCRs). Maybe you got one of the later-phase videos and that's why it was just plopped onto Liz's windshield.
There was a lot of other hilarious stuff we had to do. One thing we did was write fan updates and street team "missions" for various bands' fans, on contract to the record labels, but we had to do it in the voice of the band. So, you know, imagine if you had to say...write a weekly email to the Juggalos about the Dark Carnival and how they could help bring it to the masses. Then, on top of that, you had to get it approved by the people at the label before you could send it out, to make sure it was "on message", so you'd get editorial notes, on your stupid fake Juggalo email, from somebody at the label. (Note: I did not actually do this specifically for Insane Clown Posse, but my friend from high school who was working in-house at a label did). I spent a lot of time doing this.
My all-time favorite work thing that happened while I was there, though (I mean, I'm not counting stuff like the time we got Alizé to send us a few sample cases with all the cocktails they wanted us to get bars to serve and we got super bombed, or anything that was just purely fun like that. We had a lot of parties. Like we'd always pitch a studio "you know what would be a great way to promote this movie? Sponsor some parties with open bars in New York, L.A., etc." And then we'd do it.) was during a time when the business wasn't doing so well. We were desperately thinking of projects we could pitch to studios, because that's where we made most of our money, and our boss and one of the other guys were getting ready to fly to L.A. to meet with all of them. We were in that "brainstormed out" mode where you start saying stuff that just doesn't make any sense but you think it's so hilarious you can't even get the words out.
One of the studios was getting ready to release the Soderbergh remake of "Solaris". I suggested that we buy a bunch of those remote-control blimps and paint them silver, and then we get dudes to fly them just over head through the streets of Manhattan, slowly, just over people's heads. Maybe put lights on them or something. We're laughing. Somebody added that, a few yards behind, a dude in a spacesuit would walk up to people looking confused and ask, "Have you seen my spaceship?" and give them a flyer or something. We're in hysterics and talking about the spacesuits, the makeup, how the actors will play it as if they are honestly scared, how the remote control 'spaceships' will be toy blimps. The boss is like, "wow, that is a pretty dumb idea. There's no way I'm going to pitch that. Let's go back to serious ideas please," but everyone was pretty tapped out and we went to a bar.
So the next day, they fly out to L.A., they have an insane string of bad meetings and bad luck, finally they are meeting with one of the marketing bosses and they go through the pitches they had that they thought were gold, and the guy's like, "that's it? You scheduled this meeting with me and that's all you got?" And so the boss reaches deep into the riff bag: "Well, there is this one other concept we had," and he goes on to carefully and seriously pitch the remote control blimp/space-suited actors in Manhattan concept for "Solaris".
The studio guy puts his forehead on his tented fingers. He is silent. The boss and the other guy are wide-eyed, breath held. This could be a make-or-break deal for the company at this point. Finally the studio guy looks up. "First of all," he says, "in all my years in the film promotion business, that is the single stupidest idea I have ever heard, and a LOT of really stupid people work in this business." Our guys are waiting for the 'but'. "But the real problem," the studio guy continues, "is that that movie is at Fox. This is fucking Universal. Get the fuck out of here." I don't think things went to well with that studio from there on out, but I'm not really sure because I quit a few days later.
Anyway, congratulations on winning today's "HOLY SHIT THE INTERNET IS INSANE" contest. The prize is a vague sense of dread about what this might be doing to our society!
On "Before You Die, You See"
"Before my friends and I watched the video from The Ring in my mom’s living room the most exciting thing that happened to me was I got to give a speech at eighth grade commencement. So thank you, DreamWorks marketing team circa early-2000’s. Thank you."
Uhhh You're Welcome! Awesome!. I did this. Well, I was one of the people on the team that did it. My first job out of college was working at this tiny marketing firm where we did projects like this for movies and records and video games and so on. So strictly speaking it wasn't the DreamWorks marketing team, it was like three or four 22-year-olds in a small office in lower Manhattan. Man, nothing has made me feel this old since I realized that I actually like and recognize most of the music they play between segments on NPR. Sadly, that was yesterday.
Working at this job totally ruined my brain, because it made me think every single thing was some type of marketing, but I did think this project was pretty cool. After a while though, you suspect every piece of street art is marketing. Every blog post. Even when a stranger comes up to you in a bar, you're like, "who is paying this person to talk to me and why?"
The video got to be on top of Liz's car thanks to our network of street teams (read: a list of email addresses of kids who would occasionally respond to offers to do odd jobs for twenty bucks, and then occasionally actually do them). Although, strictly speaking, this person fucked up because the videos were supposed to be nonchalantly left around on chairs in cafes or places where they would seem plausibly mislaid, not stuffed under windshield wipers. The "street teams" were supposed to do whatever the thing was and then send us pictures of it so we could send the proof back to Dreamworks, but they always slacked off. At least you actually saw the video. I just found the old spreadsheet of the street team in my email for this. There were two street team members marked 'paid' on this project in Connecticut. One at Yale, one at Fairfield. Which 'local college' did you see this show at?
There were a whole lot of other parts to this campaign besides just the videos. I can't remember all the details, but I remember we made these "LOST VIDEO PROJECT - REWARD" flyers, with a mysterious still on them, and we had the street team kids put those up on telephone poles and stuff, and we were hoping people would both find the video, and connect it with the flyers, and post one or the other on different websites and stuff. There was also some sort of slow reveal of the whole plan, like there was a cryptic URL at the end of the video or something and the page was just a teaser that eventually got updated with a trailer or something. There was also some kind of a contest, and possibly a bunch of interlocking websites or fake conspiracy sites about the videos. We did a lot of fake websites, generally, like we'd make shitty geocities pages with people speculating about some mystery or another and linking to one another and quoting each other, arguing, etc. except it was all fake. It was actually really confusing to keep it all straight.
It was pretty funny though, after we sent all the videos out, to monitor forums and stuff at people's schools that had people speculating about the video and so on. It wasn't like I LOVE BEES or anything, everyone pretty much figured it out right away, but they at least posted the questions on their school's forums. I think there may have been different phases, where the videos either did or did not have a Dreamworks logo at the end that pretty much told you exactly what was happening, or maybe that was just something we argued about (like we argued about whether or not kids could be expected to have VCRs). Maybe you got one of the later-phase videos and that's why it was just plopped onto Liz's windshield.
There was a lot of other hilarious stuff we had to do. One thing we did was write fan updates and street team "missions" for various bands' fans, on contract to the record labels, but we had to do it in the voice of the band. So, you know, imagine if you had to say...write a weekly email to the Juggalos about the Dark Carnival and how they could help bring it to the masses. Then, on top of that, you had to get it approved by the people at the label before you could send it out, to make sure it was "on message", so you'd get editorial notes, on your stupid fake Juggalo email, from somebody at the label. (Note: I did not actually do this specifically for Insane Clown Posse, but my friend from high school who was working in-house at a label did). I spent a lot of time doing this.
My all-time favorite work thing that happened while I was there, though (I mean, I'm not counting stuff like the time we got Alizé to send us a few sample cases with all the cocktails they wanted us to get bars to serve and we got super bombed, or anything that was just purely fun like that. We had a lot of parties. Like we'd always pitch a studio "you know what would be a great way to promote this movie? Sponsor some parties with open bars in New York, L.A., etc." And then we'd do it.) was during a time when the business wasn't doing so well. We were desperately thinking of projects we could pitch to studios, because that's where we made most of our money, and our boss and one of the other guys were getting ready to fly to L.A. to meet with all of them. We were in that "brainstormed out" mode where you start saying stuff that just doesn't make any sense but you think it's so hilarious you can't even get the words out.
One of the studios was getting ready to release the Soderbergh remake of "Solaris". I suggested that we buy a bunch of those remote-control blimps and paint them silver, and then we get dudes to fly them just over head through the streets of Manhattan, slowly, just over people's heads. Maybe put lights on them or something. We're laughing. Somebody added that, a few yards behind, a dude in a spacesuit would walk up to people looking confused and ask, "Have you seen my spaceship?" and give them a flyer or something. We're in hysterics and talking about the spacesuits, the makeup, how the actors will play it as if they are honestly scared, how the remote control 'spaceships' will be toy blimps. The boss is like, "wow, that is a pretty dumb idea. There's no way I'm going to pitch that. Let's go back to serious ideas please," but everyone was pretty tapped out and we went to a bar.
So the next day, they fly out to L.A., they have an insane string of bad meetings and bad luck, finally they are meeting with one of the marketing bosses and they go through the pitches they had that they thought were gold, and the guy's like, "that's it? You scheduled this meeting with me and that's all you got?" And so the boss reaches deep into the riff bag: "Well, there is this one other concept we had," and he goes on to carefully and seriously pitch the remote control blimp/space-suited actors in Manhattan concept for "Solaris".
The studio guy puts his forehead on his tented fingers. He is silent. The boss and the other guy are wide-eyed, breath held. This could be a make-or-break deal for the company at this point. Finally the studio guy looks up. "First of all," he says, "in all my years in the film promotion business, that is the single stupidest idea I have ever heard, and a LOT of really stupid people work in this business." Our guys are waiting for the 'but'. "But the real problem," the studio guy continues, "is that that movie is at Fox. This is fucking Universal. Get the fuck out of here." I don't think things went to well with that studio from there on out, but I'm not really sure because I quit a few days later.
Anyway, congratulations on winning today's "HOLY SHIT THE INTERNET IS INSANE" contest. The prize is a vague sense of dread about what this might be doing to our society!