According to ClickZ, blog search site Technorati will begin a deal with Paramount Pictures today to assist the studio in supporting some of its releases via word of mouth marketing. Technorati will collect blog posts buzzing about the films to be posted on the movies’ promotional sites, and Paramount will advertise the films on the Technorati homepage.
The first campaign, slated for kick-off today, is a push for An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary covering Al Gore’s environmental crusadery. Technorati will feature Gore’s favorite blogs as part of the effort, but as of this writing we haven’t seen them on the site, and the ad on Technorati’s homepage is promoting Peaceful Warrior, a Lions Gate release. We haven’t seen any external blog content appear on An Inconvenient Truth’s site yet, either, but when it does we’re guessing it will show up somewhere around here.
Peter Hirschberg, Technorati Chairman and CMO, discussed the nature of the deal with ClickZ: “When you look at what independent film is,” he said – as a Paramount Classics venture, An Inconvenient Truth probably qualifies – “it’s all about capturing word-of-mouth.
“Word-of-mouth is incredibly ephemeral. In the blogosphere, if you can capture all that stuff and have a film site put up a tent and serve as a home or community for that, suddenly the film is visible. This is in essence what we’re doing.”
We’re not sure that invisibility is a major obstacle plaguing a film about an erstwhile Vice President’s global warming jeremiad; although it’s opening small, it’s gotten a fair amount of press, and (at least among environmental wonks and political enthusiasts) it’s provoked plenty of discussion, online and off. Still, we’re curious to see what kind of effect the voice of bloggers will have when employed collectively like a clutch of reviewers’ blurbs.
