What To Learn From The Spartan Phenomenon

March 23, 2007 • Filed in: Thoughts & Relationships

My officemate sent me some text he copy-pasted from digg:

I haven’t seen 300 yet because I was banned from my cineplex. We had all lined up in front of the theater for about 30 minutes, and then they brought us in. I had to stand right beside these two fat, horse-faced lesbians eating each others tongues like they were making a political statement or something. So, like 30 minutes later, we end up shuffling in the theater and these fucking bitches start bitching about having to wait when the movie is about to start, mind you, it was 11 and it was a midnight showing. It turns out they were going to see that stupid Jim Carrey movie 23 and they were missing it. So, the ugliest of the two bitches just exclaims like no one’s there “This is the wrong fucking movie!” I just had to do what I did next. I shouted at the top of my lungs “This is SPARTA” and kicked her in the chest, causing her to fall down about 8 steps to the floor. Most were shocked, but about 80% of the theater started to cheer, and…

Have you noticed how that movie 300 has become a social phenomenon? Everybody seems to be talking about it. I remember when The Matrix first came out, it was just like this - people talked about it everywhere, even in Philosophy classes. 300 hundred seems to have also achieved that level of popularity. Check out the spoofs that came from the movie:

I personally think it’s an example of how to great really good BUZZ. Three months ago when I saw the trailer of the movie, I found it really eye-catching. The graphics were good, the sound was emotionally- charged, and the scenes were really gripping. When I saw that trailer I immediately searched about the story behind 300. I read about Sparta, the battle of Thermopylae, and how the Persians were defeated.

The trailer was enough to make me want an instant history review!

Notice that movies generally follow a pattern for creating buzz:

Step 1 - Show A Teaser of the Movie
Step 2 - Show A Trailer (much longer than a teaser)
Step 3 - Preview the Movie to selected audiences and critics
Step 4 - Show the movie

The pattern works. For the movie 300, the teaser and trailers generated enough buzz even before the film was shown. People talked about it. It was dugged, reviewed and criticized.

If you were going to launch a new product/service, would you be able to follow the same ‘buzz-generating’ method? Can you make people exclaim “This… IS… SPARTAAAAAAAAAA!!!!?”

Comments

By jun on March 23rd, 2007 at 11:27 am

hi Jozzua.

Congratulations for being a finalist for the Philippine Blog Awards 2007 under the Business and Entrepreneurship Category.

I’m making the rounds to gather the contact info and establish direct communication with the finalists. This will give us an avenue to give instructions and other details.

May we ask for the following please?

Real Name:
Email address
Mobile Number
City and Country where you are based

Once this is settled, we’ll know where to communicate the Awards Night details with.

We hope to hear from you soon.

All the best to you and your blog.

By Mae on March 23rd, 2007 at 12:34 pm

wahahahaha This is Sparta talaga ha! matatawa siguro ako ng malakas na malakas kung andun ako hehe