Viral Snakes on a Blog

There is this movie coming out about snakes on a plane with Samuel Jackson. Nothing remarkable about that really, more summer escapism. What’s more remarkable is the concerted, relentless, and nauseatingly omnipresent viral marketing campaign that the studio has been pushing for what seems like an age now. The latest effort is entitled All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us, and has been uploaded to YouTube (and countless other clippings sites). Its home base is on a slick website owned and designed by Hollywood marketing company Heavenspot. This company is astroturfing this effort under the moniker “CroFab Joe“, and has recently created a bunch of ‘hip’ profiles over the past few weeks on various high-traffic, 20-something-friendly sites. ‘Crofab’ is a popular anti-snake venom medication, so at least that is witty. However, the marketeers at Heavenspot commit a critical newbie error by entitling it “SnakeS” and not “Snake”. What made the original All Your Base so endearing was the casual lack of concern with basic grammar like singular/plural. But I guess mangling the title of the film into a singular Snake was too “edgy”.

What’s perhaps more baffling is why a site like Boing Boing uncynically supports this kind of underhand manipulation by hidden persuaders. And it’s not alone. The only explanation that makes sense to me that serious viral marketing slush fund money is being thrown around to buy blog inches.