[1]Ain’t it uncool news: The results are in from Grace Hill Media’s futuristic way of talking up movies in cyberspace: through good old-fashioned, low-ticket-item bribery. The PR firm promoted Universal Pictures’ sci-fi flick Serenity [2] by setting up advance screenings for bloggers last month [3], on the condition that they agree to “post a pre-written paragraph” about the movie on their blogs—in other words, run a free ad (disguised as viral chatter) in exchange for seeing the movie early and gratis. According to Mediapost, Serenity did earn exponentially more blog posts, as measured by Technorati [4], than did its main opening-weekend competitor, Disney/Touchstone’s Flightplan [5]. Of course, there is the young male geek factor to consider. Is it that surprising that a converted sci-fi TV series would create more buzz online than an abrasive-looking raging-mother movie starring Jodi Foster and a fire extinguisher? Also noteworthy: Flightplan earned more at the box office during its opening weekend.
—Posted by Gregory Solman