I watched Watchmen last night. I’ll not spoil it for anyone who reads this post, but I will say there’s a significant turning point in the movie. And overall I think it was a reasonably good effort.
This post is not about the film itself, so much as the marketing effort that went on behind it. I’ve posted previously about interactive marketing with regard to Batman and Cloverfield, but I’d not really taken on board the amount of stuff that Watchmen produced.
Idea IS the format blog has an awesome round-up of the marketing around Watchmen and is well worth the read as it’s a kind of personal journey for the author. Some of the highlights are below:
…I examined the pervasive presence of television, the spectre of nuclear armageddon, and a growing sense of moral ambiguity ushered in by an age of scientific enlightenment, religious disenfranchisement and the emergence of the all-powerful media industrial complex (of which I am now such a loyal and trusted servant).
I found that these recurred within the significant graphic novels of the era, both in terms of narrative development, and as visual elements, framing characters existing within a menacing grey area beyond the childish binary of black and white, right and wrong, good and evil.
Meaning that when [we] sat down and talked about how Watchmen could be adapted into a post-9/11 PG-13 superhero story, I was stumped…
Principals that they lived by in creating the marketing collateral include Making It Your Own (with enough time that momentum can build):
Build The Story:
Go Where Your Fans Are:
WATCHMEN Q&A in PlayStation Home [Official Machinima Promo] from PPC Interactive on Vimeo.
The Bigger Picture (bringing it out from the niche fans to the mainstream):
With thanks to Idea IS the format and Daniel Light for the immense personal story and insight, and Blackmaps for the Simpson’s image.
