Watching The Unwatchable “Watchmen.”

This is not a movie review. But I did want to wait until my friend Jeff Wells decided to review “The Watchmen” on Hollywood-Elsewhere.com just to make sure I wasn’t the only one falling asleep in the theater. Which leads us to a very interesting subject indeed. Audience Expectation. What does the guy walking into a given brand’s marketing sphere, cone or environment expect to encounter in his perceptual landscape?

The key word here is “expect.” If you are in a movie theater you expect trans lights, flashy POS and (hopefully) a few kick-ass trailers. If you are reading the front page of the Wall Street Journal you do not expect to read the word “fuck.” If you did encounter this word your expectations of the Journal would be drastically changed. And with them, your value perceptions of WSJ as a company. “Murdock” might flash through your mind and a great brand would have fallen just a notch.

So my entry to the Watchmen’s marketing sphere was the bloody smiley face trailer and posters that occupy every clear space in Hollywood. I didn’t know from the gothic novels of the late 80’s. I was in the middle of the LA Gang Wars for the City Attorney’s office in 1987. My dance card was punched with really real bad guys and no super heroes around when you need one.

However, my expectation was Super Heroes. Doing Super heroic stuff. What I got was 2 hrs and 45 minutes of a bunch of guys talking about being super guys once upon a time and didn’t it suck, or here I am standing around in very public places with my dick hanging out. Or we hated this guy. He’s dead. So. None are very compelling for the movie-going experience.

Now I could sit here and type out the laundry list of failures and blunders in this ponderous monstrosity I subjected my self and my buddy to. But they would all be purely subjective. What is more interesting about this movie and more and more of the entertainment experience is that it is ready to become mediia agnostic with a little help for the audience that just joined the party. Why are my expectations “Pow”, “Bam” and Special Effects and not long -drawn out crime story exposition. The answer is both piss poor marketing and late entry into the story premise.

For example, as obtuse as Watchman was to watch, there is already a DVD spin-off of a comic book ( “Black Freighter”) story authored by one of the Watchmen in the 12 novel series. A strategy pioneered by the Anime Classic “Animatrix” spun out from the “Matrix Trilogy.” There is no reference to any such artistic pastime in the film. None. WTF?

To investigate this potential venue for NeoAdvertising we initiated “Vampires Wanted : IRS” a narrative blog written by a young agent of the IRS working on a multi-billion dollar bailout fraud case. A case that has captured the interest of his next door neighbor. Who only comes out at night. To wash her bloody sheets. And so our story of Vampires in service of the Federal Government unwinds.

We had toyed with the idea of migrating the story between several types of web-based media, ultimately migrating it to YouTube and then late night TV. That was the plan, with several DVD spin-offs and Downloadable sub lots to keep the Audience engaged. Then we considered what it would take to step from behind the screen with the story. Plant our Vampire Banksters for the IRS in a real setting. Stage it in the luxurious lofts and rooftops of in Downtown LA.

Our plan is to let people come into a studio of a self professed former Vampire who atones for his heinous crimes by painting the victims of his former lifetime as he sleeps. Begin the story with him and his entourage in the real (and dark) world of LA’s Downtown Arts and Fashion Underground.

Our objective is to build a neighborhood audience that can spread the story back to their friends and family in the rest of America. The experience with the Watchmen was a great wake-up call for planning that effort. It taught us that the content side of the NeoAdNet has to remain engaging to the outsider, no matter how complexity is found compelling to the installed audience. Constant on-ramps for newcommers are crucial.

The wakeup call for you is, that if you didn’t read the gothic novels and you are not trying to reinvent advertising, don’t waste 2 hrs and 45min on the Unwatchable Watchmen.