When book trailers go bad

[ivyfic]

Has anyone else seen the James Patterson ad on TV for Max? It's terrible. I guess if you're James Patterson you've got the money to burn an a tv ad campaign, but how did his marketing department let him roll out with this? And him going on about how this is his favorite character--a hot teenage girl with wings--is just kind of skeevy.

Comments

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

From what I heard, he came *from* advertising. (Which is part of why/how he had all those commercials out there for his early books, which is part of why/how he got so big).

And the semi-ironic thing is that, from my limited time in advertising, how pretty/classy/slick/nice a commercial is has almost nothing to do with how effective it is as a call to action. Time and again, the commercials that we all thought were the clunkiest/ugliest/tackiest were the ones that got significantly higher response rates than the ones we all would want to actually show as our own work. *shrug*. And if his target audience is men his age, being skeevy about hot teenage girls might be just the thing.

(not trying to be contrary, just letting you know the depressing facts, as least as I experienced them working w/ TV ads.)

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Have you seen it, though? His whole pitch seems to be YA. "Mom, meet Max." And then he repeats that a few times. It doesn't actually say anything about the book, really, and to me communicates just that he's gone cliched urban fantasy. Maybe that makes some people want to pick up the book, but not me.

[decidedly.livejournal.com]

I like the idea of book trailers in theory - but so often they're cringe-worthy. Just out of curiosity, are there any you find to be effective?

(And dear god, hearing James Patterson talk about Maximum Ride pretty much guarantees I will never even touch it.)