Brilliant PR or Death of Heath Ledger? You Decide.

Last week, I turned in a PR case study to my professor and we began to discuss this in class. He did not accept my study and shot it down quickly before a real discussion could occur which leads to this question, "What made The Dark Knight so successful?" Was it a brilliant PR campaign, the death of Heath Ledger, or both?

I will present my case with two viral videos for you to watch and you decide.

[D]uring the years 2007 to 2008, before the release of The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan launched a worldwide marketing campaign for the film. This campaign started off with a black screen website of nothing but when you took the pointer and highlighted the screen, you can see 'HA ha hA hA' covering the whole page.

The website then progressed to games and clues, engaging a nation wide man hunt to solve the riddles of the Joker. Different results occurred revealing scenes of The Dark Knight film while showing graffiti left by the Joker. This marketing campaign also recruited people to dress like the crazy clown.

Along side of the Joker campaign, an 'I Believe In Harvey Dent' van took to the streets of America. Websites followed, promoting Harvey Dent and identical sites arose with the Joker defacing them. Sites for the Gotham City Police Department showed up with numbers to contact and police defacing the Dark Knight.

I took part in some activities while living in LA and this campaign created quite the PR stir. There were over 10 million participants from 75 countries throughout the world. As a result, The Dark Knight broke box office records with the most pre-advanced tickets sold, 'opening night, morning, midnight, 3am and 6am showings sold out.'

My Public Relations professor shot this down quickly and gave the success of the film to the death of Heath Ledger who played The Joker.  Another student tried to give credit to the PR campaign but he was shot down quickly with a repeated phrase, "it was the death of Ledger."





So what made The Dark Knight so successful? Was it the brilliant PR campaign, the death of Heath Ledger, or both?

The Suit Wears Facebook

Today, I am sick.  I am so sick I had been stuck on the computer all day exploring the world of Facebook into a further depth then you can ever imagine.

These new discoveries lead me to this announcement:

I am please to announce that "The Suit" is fully implemented with Facebook.  As long as you have a Facebook account you can "Like" the page to share with your friends and all Facebook members may comment and discuss freely on each of my blogs.

I also started a Facebook page titled "The Suit."  Goto the page and like it.  By doing this you will stay up to date with my blogs on my current social experiment.

Myers 2.0 Project

The social media is dominating the world of business and playing a huge asset in building profit.  I have seen incredible things coming from this but I have one question, is it for every kind of business?

Recently, Myers asked me to rejoin their efforts in making their business grow.  They specialize in funeral services, own four mortuaries, and one cemetery.  The role I am had taken on is the General Service Manager for their cemetery, Evergreen Memorial Park.  My main role is to rebuild a sales team for their cemetery on both at-need and pre-need planning.

Yes, sales is a pain but it pays well if you know how to do it right.

Since this is my second round with the company, I was doing some research to see what I can do different and what Myers is missing.  I wanted to make sales possible without knocking on doors saying, “HEY!  I’m selling cemetery plots, want to buy one?”

I am not mocking the need of selling cemetery plans before someone dies, in fact, I believe you need a solid plan in place so that if something were to happen to you, your family does not have to run around like chickens with their heads cut off.  They can actually do something valuable and that is to spend time with each other while mourning the loss of their loved ones.

My plan is to make Myers viral in Web 2.0.  They only have one competitor in the area who has a facebook page but no valuable information except location and website with 189 followers.

I created a facebook page with location information, news articles, and soon I will have obituaries added to the page.

*Why obituaries?*

The fact is this, the local newspaper industry is undergoing a major change.  They will either close their doors or turn viral.  Less people are reading the newspaper and are turning to the world wide web for almost all their resources.  With facebook’s dominance and revolution I figured it is the perfect location for my Myers 2.0 project.

When any comments, posts, pictures, or videos are added to a fan/business based facebook page, anyone who had “Liked” the page will receive automatic updates from that page.  So I thought, “Why not post obituaries?”  I believe that if you involve the local community on facebook, they can add their comments to the obituary and additional memories.

Also, I am taking advantage of the “Events” tab so I can post local events.  Myers hold annual events at the cemetery but only so many people hear about it.  Since Myers has a strong hold on the community we can increase it by informing them right in their living rooms about these events with hopeful results in increase attendance.

This is only the beginning but we will see how my project turns out.  If all works out well, this will revolutionize the funeral industry.

iPhone Exclusive to AT&T & Verizon?

Earlier this month, Verizon announced that it will start selling the iPhone 4 on its network. More rumors followed that Verizon is paying Apple extra just to keep the iPhone from being sold to other carriers for about a year.

A couple of days ago, Apple cleared this rumor by stating that it is no longer exclusive to any carrier.

What does this mean?  We will soon find out as both T-mobile and Sprint have a big announcement to make in February and they are keeping that a secret.

If you want the iPhone an don't want to pay a high price for it, just hang tight, the speculation is that both Sprint and T-mobile's announcement will be on the iPhone.

(ITBusinessEdge)

The Dark Knight Rises Catwoman & Bane

(UPDATE: Photo of Tom Hardy as Bane. Go to the-suit.com to get up to date information on The Dark Knight Rises plus more.)

The cat is out of the bag and Christopher Nolan reveals a little more about his third installment of the caped crusader, “The Dark Knight Rises.”

E! News released an article today that Nolan finally made his pick of actors and that Anne Hathaway will be playing Selina Kyle, Catwoman, a love interests to follow the death of Rachel Dawes.

Christopher Nolan states, “I am thrilled to have the opportunity to work with Anne Hathaway, who will be a fantastic addition to our ensemble as we complete our story.”

Nolan also made the long awaited reveal that Tom Hardy will play Bane, a muscle intellect.

The Dark Knight will be released in mid-summer of 2012. Filming set to begin this spring.

 (Disclaimer:  The movie poster is fan made and it looks fantastic!)