YATADU (Yet Another Thing Andy Doesn't Understand)

[andrewducker]

The point of adverts, as far as I understand, is that lots of people see them and thus want to buy your product/go to your movie/visit your country.

Why, then, do they go to extreme lengths to prevent people from downloading them and passing them around their friends?

I watched the trailer for Casino Royale earlier (looks pretty good), and I had to download a plugin to bloody well do it.  What on earth are they afraid of???

Comments

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Because they don't want to be whores to Quicktime or Realplayer perhaps?

[andrewducker]

But QT and RP based ads are _also_ usually set up to at least make it difficult to download them to your PC for later.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

They want people to see the trailer, yes.

-However- they also want to do several other things. They want to get visits to the website, presumably. They want (I would assume) to create hype. Having to do something specific to see the trailer, rather than just getting it from a mate or seeing it on TV is a perfectly valid marketing tactic. Heck, that trailer will be downloaded by lots of people just now I'm sure. It's easy to download streaming media. And to download QT stuff you have to have Quicktime Pro, unless you are being naughty, I thought... and just the same goes for this.

I would imagine that pretty much all the people you would tell about the trailer will be online, and many of them will be online when you tell them about it, so they can just go to the site.

Heck, they can invite their friends round to watch the trailer on their high-spec computer. They can have Casino Royale Teaser Trailer parties... it creates social events, it's a phenomenon!

[andrewducker]

It was more of a problem when I had broadband and other people didn't (and asked for things on disk). And even more of a problem when I had dialup and wanted to save the trailer to watch again later (after it had taken 45 minutes to download).

You don't need QTPro to download QT files - you can just do Save As. QT Pro is most useful for watching things full screen or converting to other formats.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

I'd assume that apple or whatever are able to provide the studios with stats about the number of downloads/ when they were downloaded / from where etc etc. All good info when preparing to release the film, which they'd lose (or would become less valuable) if they let people download and pass around to friends.

What really annoys me is when the trailer is great and it's not even included on the DVD. I give you the new Dawn of the Dead. Fantastic trailer. Worth keeping. Nowhere to be found even on the 'Directors Cut' DVD. I digress...

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I'm on the Apple site, I went to a trailer, I watched the trailer, I right click, choose to save, and get told I must have Pro to save it.

And if you're watching snazzy quality offerable to friends trailers these days, you're presumably going to have broadband... and the time for the plugin wasn't much slower than the time to load up a trailer in quicktime or realplayer.

Also, and this is just a small thing, sometimes it's nice that not everything uses the same formats/systems that have cornered the market. And don't require you to make an effort to run it.

So it shaved maybe five seconds off your day (if it was actually slower than a QT trailer loading)... You're not that busy. You could spare the time. You didn't spend half an hour downloading a file, then realise you needed to spend another hour downloading software to play it. You clicked a link, it loaded its own player and played the trailer. Did you click the link and see a broken link because you didn't have the player, and have to spend ages on forums finding out how to run the file?

If you had been on dialup, and had to download a player too, that would suck. But this isn't then. It's now.

It's a cool trailer though. *searches for about 2.5 seconds* Ooh, loads and loads of links to programs that'll grab streaming videos or, for worst-case-scenarioes, will just record what happens on a portion of the screen + sound.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

That's odd - I would have assumed that this player would be used for all Sony releases... but it's not - the absolutely HILARIOUS Ghost Rider trailer is in QT. I wonder why it's different for that one.

[laserboy.livejournal.com]

Perhaps the Bond franchise is more important to Sony than a c-lister Marvel comics character that virtually noone cares about. :)