Smile, It’s Fun (and creepy)
You saw her. And him. Millions of us did. The creepy, smiley folks sitting right behind home plate. The ones impossible to miss on your television and just as difficult to forget once you’d seen then. The folks responsible for driving people to social to screen grab, meme, capture, question and debate. And, now, knowing the whole story, this marketer can only smile.
If you’re late catching up, this story does a good job of running it down. Here are the basics though:
Last week, several individuals began popping up in the front rows of various MLB stadiums
Those individuals sat in their seats, seemingly in a trance, with devilish grins on their faces
And…they…didn’t…move
It was so disarmingly strange that you couldn’t help but take notice
So much so, that millions did
They then ‘Gramed, tweeted, texted and talked about it
This is what it looked like for millions watching those games:
Smile girl at Mets-A’s
Smile guy at Yanks game
Creepy, right? Also, brilliant.
Turns out this was all part of a marketing campaign for the upcoming horror flick, Smile that debuts tomorrow.
It was a great reminder to PR folks like me that “stunts” can, in fact, work. It has succeeded in doing so many things that often feel like a pipe dream for “far-out” concepts that get proposed. It has become viral…in the truest sense. Oh, and it was relatively cheap when you think about it.
Purchase some tickets. Hire some actors. Let the Internet and modern culture do the rest.
The cynics out there might question whether it really worked. My answer? 19M views of the trailer to date. 100s of millions in earned media and social impressions. And, yes, many millions talking about a movie they likely never would have noticed by way of wild postings, banner ads or pre-roll.
I bet their marketing team has a nice perma-grin on their faces right now.
