Mike Stopforth

Snakes on a Plane is a movie about, well, snakes that get put on a plane. It’s arguably the worst idea for an action movie ever. It is due for release on the 18 August 2006. The thing about Snakes on a Plane is, it’s everywhere. It’s the latest and greatest web meme (unit of cultural information, such as a cultural practice or idea, that is transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another), driven by social software - blogs, wikis and like. There are fan sites, a dedicated Wikipedia entry, fan-generated trailers and movie clips and more. New Line Cinema, the studio behind Snakes on a Plane, has spent a fraction of what we’ve come to expect as a stadard blockbuster marketing budget and instead are enjoying the formidable collection of online hype and buzz around their dodgy creation.

According to Wikipedia:

“In recognition of the unprecedented Internet buzz for what had been a minor movie in their 2006 line-up, New Line Cinema ordered five days of additional shooting in early March 2006[7] (principal photography had wrapped in September 2005). While re-shoots normally imply problems with a film, the producers opted to add new scenes to the film to take the movie from PG-13 into R-rated territory and bring the movie in line with the growing fan expectation. Among the reported additions is a line that originated as an Internet parody of Samuel L. Jackson’s traditional movie persona: “That’s IT! I’ve had it with these #@%! snakes on this #@%! plane!”

Where’d it all begin? How’d it happen? Well, as rumour would have it, much of the online conversation around Snakes on a Plane happened following a blog entry by one of the screenwriters working on the project, Josh Friedman.

The blog entry confirmed that Samuel L. Jackson would be starring, which is enough to get more than half of the geeks on the planet stirring, and that the new global phrase for ’sh*t happens’ was going to be ’snakes on a plane’.

To quote Josh:

WIFE: “Honey you stepped in dog poop again. ”
ME: “Snakes on a Plane…”
DOCTOR: “Your cholesterol is 290. Perhaps you want to mix in a walk once in a while.”
ME: “Snakes on a Plane…”
WIFE: “Honey while you were on your cholesterol walk you stepped in dog poop again.”

You get the picture.

Within days of Josh publishing his entry, Snakes on a Plane was pasted all over the Web.

Viral marketing (or viral advertising or word-of-mouth advertising) is loosely defined as any advertising that propegates itself. Wikipedia goes further to say that viral marketing “seeks to exploit pre-existing social networks to produce exponential increases in brand awareness… it is word-of-mouth delivered and enhanced online, harnessing the network effect of the Internet and can be very useful in reaching a large number of people rapidly”.

Perhaps on the back of the Snakes on a Plane phenomenon, and the steadily growing respect amongst more traditional marketers for viral marketing, another film is looking to leverage the citizen media juggernaut.

‘The Break-Up‘, starring Vince Vaughn and Jen Aniston is encouraging amateur videographers to share their break-up stories on the Google Video platform. So far the response has been overwhelming, and there are some pretty cool (and some pretty awful) submissions.

Consumers have always had something to say about your brand. In the past, those utterings were confined to social braais, over the phone to friends or perhaps around the watercooler at work. But on a global platform? Never in the history of humankind have we had so many opportunities to spread so much information with so little effort at such blinding speed.

It begs the question: Are you on top of the social media juggernaut? Do you have a handle on what’s happening? Do you know when and where your brand is being mentioned, dissed or evangelised by some arbitrary ‘consumer’?