NYT On Online Reputations

prostoalex writes "New York Times analyzes the importance of online postings for the company images and product success/failure rates. Intuit's TurboTax DRM "feature" is mentioned as one of the bad ideas, that was quickly and vociferously opposed by the Internet folk. The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding got quite a nice cash flow even though the advertising budget was low, but opinions on the Internet regarded the movie highly. Rating systems of Epinions and Slashdot are also discussed briefly."

Comments

Low ad budget??

[freeweed]

The movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding got quite a nice cash flow even though the advertising budget was low

I live in Winnipeg (where Nia Vardalos is from, originaly, and yes, that's in Canada). I think they spent their entire advertising budget in my city alone, if the above quote is accurate.

I'm enough of a movie buff that I see about 2-3 movies in theatres a week, and let me tell you: 6 *months* before MBFGW was released, I was seeing trailers for it every few weeks. The month before it came out, the onslaught started. Every single movie I went to had a trailer for it, and I do mean *every*. During its run here, ditto. Of course, I could somewhat ignore this, until the TV campaign started in about 2 weeks before it premiered. Suddenly everyone I knew was talking about how 'good' this movie looked, well before seeing it. By the time it actually was making any money in theatres, very few people I knew hadn't yet heard of it (hell, even my parents were asking what all the fuss was about, and it's been several years since they've seen a new movie).

In a city like Winnipeg, all they had to do was mention once or twice that a film created and starred in by a 'Pegger was coming out, and the local media would have done all the free promotion they needed. Instead, we were bombarded with more trailers than I saw for Spider-Man and LOTR:TT combined, and yes, that's a lot :) I didn't even know anything about Vardalos until after the movie had premiered; until that point I just figured this was the latest 'Hottest Romantic Comedy of the Year!' to be placed on the hype-mobile.

Maybe the rest of the world was spared from this, but up here it was insane. Then again, maybe a 'low advertising budget' just means no superbowl commercial these days.

Re:And brace yourself for a major bloom of astrotu

[GMontag]

As for man-on-the-street interviews, "The Paper of Record" has one of these on perminant retainer: Greg Packer. For example,

Another average individual eager to get Hillary's book was Greg Packer, who was the centerpiece of the New York Times' "man on the street" interview about Hillary-mania. After being first in line for an autographed book at the Fifth Avenue Barnes & Noble, Packer gushed to the Times: "I'm a big fan of Hillary and Bill's. I want to change her mind about running for president. I want to be part of her campaign."

It was easy for the Times to spell Packer's name right because he is apparently the entire media's designated "man on the street" for all articles ever written. He has appeared in news stories more than 100 times as a random member of the public. Packer was quoted on his reaction to military strikes against Iraq; he was quoted at the St. Patrick's Day Parade, the Thanksgiving Day Parade and the Veterans' Day Parade. He was quoted at not one â" but two â" New Year's Eve celebrations at Times Square. He was quoted at the opening of a new "Star Wars" movie, at the opening of an H&M clothing store on Fifth Avenue and at the opening of the viewing stand at Ground Zero. He has been quoted at Yankees games, Mets games, Jets games â" even getting tickets for the Brooklyn Cyclones. He was quoted at a Clinton fund-raiser at Alec Baldwin's house in the Hamptons and the pope's visit to Giants stadium.

--Ann Coulter