Gutsy Marketing
This is interesting: a filmmaker named Ben Stein made a film called "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." It's a "documentary" arguing for intelligent design over evolutionary biology. How are they marketing it? They had a private screening for Scientific American, asking them to review it. Okay, that's like asking fundamental Christians to review a film that argues for abortion. So... as you can imagine, the reviews were HARSH.
"Ben Stein launches a science-free attack on Darwin." "A shameful antievolution film tries to blame Darwin for the Holocaust."
So why am I writing about it? It's on Scientific American's website. On their front page. It's their top story. They also sent a special email today to everyone on their list entitled "SciAm Feature -- Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed." The entire email consists of 3 scathing reviews, a podcast discussing the movie and an interview with the associate producer. Wow. How many millions of people are on their email list? According to Wikipedia, the magazine has a domestic circulation of 5.5M. And even though the reaction by SA and probably most of their readers is extremely negative, I'll bet there are plenty of people on the list who's curiosity is now stirred by this movie. I bet people are talking about or maybe even blogging about it. I bet Ben Stein is going to get a huge spike in his movie sales.
Very interesting marketing strategy. Takes guts, though. And lots and lots of thick skin.
Susan Ee
