oh sarah marshall

(Photo courtesy of ihatesarahmarshall.com)

I have been putting off writing about the Sarah Marshall billboards for a few weeks. I've just been enjoying observing the efforts from the sidelines and now I feel compelled to say something. Now I will commence the rambling...

Not sure if many of you have seen these billboards all around time. They are plastered everywhere, even buses and the like.

"I hate Sarah Marshall"

"You SUCK, Sarah Marshall!"

"My Mother never even liked you anyway, Sarah Marshall"

etc. etc. Just white billboard, black lettering. Tiny URL on the side. A few weeks ago I made a mental note to myself to check out the site when I got home from my drive.

http://www.ihatesarahmarshall.com
Check it out

It's a blog "written" by character Peter Bretter pretty much as an obsessed ex-boyfriend. Lovely, it happens to be a new movie (I thought it was a TV show at first) Forgetting Sarah Marshall, with my faves, Jason Segel and Kristen Bell.

Ok, seeing as Jason Segel wrote the script is it safe to say that he is obsessively updating this hate blog, too? It would be nice to think that he is.

And everytime I come back to the site I like to ponder how amazingly far and in depth they are going for this ad. Simple traditional billboard prompting one to check out the site out of sheer curiousity.

They even shot these staged photos of "Peter" tagging up the city and buying billboard space. And they even shot tabloid-tv show-esque footage where Peter is interviewed about his tactics.
(Currently at 20, 951 views). Click on his director's page to see what else he has on there. Naturally they made sure to stock up his director page with other videos to look more convincing. Handful of video diaries started 2 weeks ago.

Many candid photos. They even have sister sites (www.sarahmarshallfan.com) and a video site only for 18+ year olds (because it leads to the official movie site and the movie is rated R) which of course I can't get into because they can't validate my over 18-ness properly.

In a nutshell, do I like this ad campaign? Yeah, I'm enjoying it and have been frequenting these various spaces. I enjoy them more than the actual tv ads. It is nice to see them utilizing these web properties and I give a kudos to them for keeping things updated properly. Probably because they have the budget and willing participants. I mean, hell, they are going all out and it's pretty damn amazing that they are pulling it off, ball out, taking their budget and running with it!)

But how many more of these types of campaigns are we going to see?

I read this article in a marketing blog about how the author of the article hated microsites. His musings may not fit well with this campaign but I think he is right that in many brainstorm meetings now, people are always suggesting creating these pages, these blogs, these youtube videos, etc. They see it worked for past TV shows and some movies and it's what's in now, right? So why not! They want to bank on this not-so-novel idea. But to unknowing audience eyes this is pretty damn creative. (And don't get me wrong, I love what they are doing! They are embracing these web properties to their advantage)

I love that these same people who were afraid to do such things are embracing every bit of it now. And there are new ideas brewing right now, being tried out by others who want to take the risk with their product while others are wary. But when it works the latter will want in. It's wonderful.

What is going to be the new big thing? Maybe that Rolling Rock ad where they were going to try to get the logo on the moon? Did that happen already? Because if not then I want to look up at the sky that night. And if it did go down, did people even look? Will they have fake videos on their microsite with their "attempt"?

I'm just sayin'...