Viral Marketing

Warner Bros., who is releasing the new Batman movie, sent their marketing team to Mizzou last Thursday for a little viral marketing. Patrick told us all about this. Basically, instead of the production company spending a lot of money on TV ads that people ignore, they send a van with free t-shirts and a couple charismatic 20-somethings to a college campus and let the college students do the rest of the work.

Viral Marketing (by my definition) is when a company does one major act that startles people into talking about the company or what the company is promoting (like a movie). So we end up doing all the work for them (yes - like blogging about it. Sorry) Wikipedia: 'Viral Marketing'

So, this is what happened. Allie and Jake were in town from St. Louis because Jake is going to go to Mizzou next year. So we were taking him around campus, showing him stuff, etc. We met up with Patrick and he told us about viral marketing and that the van promoting the new Batman movie was outside of Memorial. So, like the pawns we were, we went and saw what was going on. Jenna was there too.

The people with Warner Bros. (who wouldn't tell us that they were from Warner Bros.) told us that if we stood outside their van with posters saying "I Believe in Harvey Dent" for 20 min. we would get free t-shirts. Yes, we are that easy.

I felt like I was in a cult, I got all excited about Harvey Dent and started making up cheers and marching around Lowry Mall with everyone and encouraging everyone that Harvey Dent really was the one who was going to turn around Gotham, etc.

So there were all these Mizzou Facilities trucks driving by all the time and I told Jake (the high school senior) that it would be funny if he ran up to one and slapped a bumper sticker onto the bumper while it was driving by. So he did. AND THEN A BIKE COP CAME OUT OF NOWHERE and came up to Jake and said "I'll give you two options, either you chase down that truck and take the sticker off or I charge you with vandalism." Poor Jake.

So Jake borrows Jenna's bike and takes off after this truck (down a road in a campus he's never been to before) and the bike cop follows him. After about 10 minutes of waiting and laughing we start walking in the direction that Jake went and can't find him anywhere. Eventually we see Jake riding triumphantly down Hitt St. with a crumpled bumper sticker in his raised high-schooler fist.

We saw the same van later on that night out in front of the Methodist church downtown and finally realized how obnoxious we had been. Another table at Shakespeare's pizza were making comments about how all of the Harvey Dent people should be demonstrating for something that actually matters instead of the Gotham DA who would become Two-Face. It's true.