And as an exercise...

Anyone interested in any of this, go google "cloverfield marketing campaign" .

Obviously the movie Cloverfield is just one example of many potential viral and word of mouth and other buzz campaigns I could list here... but they did a great job. The anticipation and buzz they built with a VERY minimal trailer was fantastic. And it resulted in a fantastic "launch" .

Keep in mind the age-old advertising + human psychology principle... curiosity sells. I'd say it sells more than sex. Because even "sex" will only sell to a certain sub-group of the population (albeit, a MASSIVE sub-group ) ... but curiousity, well that gets everyone.

And if you can build a teaser, a trailer, a viral campaign, something of interest, something to build curiosity, something to create controversy, something that will develop into buzz... then the marketplace will advertise for you and no big name JV partner can match the power of the voices of 1000s of excited prospects.

*BUT* for any of the above to even have a hair of a chance to develop for you, you MUST initiate it as soon as possible... NOT once your product is fully done and tested and once you have fancy testimonials and all the cool graphics done and your affiliate program in place.

Final thoughts...

I've you've seen Cloverfield, you may agree that it was good, not great. Good because it's relatively unique (next to possibly Blair Witch). But it certainly isn't a blockbuster. Had the film been promoted with just standard venues and last minute advertising, I'd bet it would have flopped. That's just my theory... but I'm pretty sure it's an accurate one.

This example's budget was $25 mil. It made $41 mil it's first WEEKEND. And the advertising came primarily from their own target market as blogs, forums and one-one-one discussions broke out. (Now imagine that but with a powerful affiliate force to help instigate that buzz building for you... massive massive opportunities but it will NEVER happen for you if you get things pretty first and focus on buzz+aff-recruiting second).