It's a fast-moving blogosphere fire... a case of Old Media vs New Media ... with former lawyer and uber blogger Michael Arrington and his horde of Techcrunch readers (I'm an avid reader) pitted against Marvel Entertainment, guardian of the hotly anticipated "make it a large tub of popcorn" Iron Man movie.
Arrington invited his readers to join him for a pre-release screening of the movie, tomorrow, at the AMC Metreon in San Francisco. He purchased all 600 seats - bascially a big giveaway -instructing those interested to reserve a seat by getting tickets at Eventbrite for a dollar, with the goal of minimizing no-shows. Understandably, interest was immediate and fierce, and tickets were snapped up in a flash.
Fast-forward a few hours, and Arrington receives a cease and desist order from a Marvel lawyer - a lawyer who I doubt was ready for the tar and feathering he's receiving in the blog comment thread. Marvel claims the showing is unauthorized, even though Arrington contacted the group sales phone number on the official Iron Man movie site. So it looks like Arrington tried to play by the rules. Perhaps his 're-sell' of tickets for a dollar (no profit motive save for publicity) broke some 'small print' rules. But Marvel is making a classic PR blunder. It can be fixed ... but this is 2008. Techcrunch is not your average blog, and its readers are not average consumers. Rather, they are, on average, Innovators and Early Adopters ... the leading edge of the Rogers Adopter Curve. So when a piece of hot news breaks, it doesn't just break on Techcrunch, with its 700,000-plus RSS subscribers ... it also fans out like a wind-aided forest fire via aggregators like Techmeme (this story is moving up the Tememe leaderboard fast as I type), and microblogging sites like Twitter and Friendfeed. And when you have people like Robert Scoble, who with one simple Tweet can let 20,000 people know that something is amiss in Techcrunch land, then if you're in the PR department at Marvel, you better have your A game ready, 24/7.
So what do you do if you're Marvel? Well, hopefully you're well aware of the firestorm that's out there, and whether you think it's justified or not doesn't matter. It's there, and you have to react to it. A PR disaster can be turned into a PR victory if handled creatively, quickly, and with the focus on creating Passionate Consumers.
So even if the Techcrunch pre-screen Iron Man movie bash somehow broke the letter of some law in someone's opinion ... there are 600 extremely disappointed fans - potential movie fans - who are wondering what you (Marvel) are going to do to make this right. And there are thousands and thousands more beyond the ticket holders who planned on seeing this anticipated movie, who are wondering what your next move will be. And there are tens of thousands of bloggers, blog readers, Tweeter, geeks and fanboys and girls who are wondering if you (Marvel) are going to simply send out stupid cease and desist letters, via some young lawyer, on the eve of an event that bazillions of people are and will be talking about on the blogosphere.
If you handle this correctly, and 'wow' Techcrunch and its readers and the blogosphere that spreads out like a spider web from it ... then you will turn a PR debacle into a lesson on how to turn fire breathing consumers into evangelists for your company and its products. So do whatever it takes. Send a second letter, apologizing for the misunderstanding. Send some Marvel people to the event, with freebies to give to all the readers who show up. Heck, send Robert Downey Jr. to the showing, and have him wear a Techcrunch T-shirt that says "hey, we've all screwed up" on the back. Have a sense of humor, humility, creative marketing ... and understand that as fast as negative publicity can spread in this New Media age ... positive vibes can spread just (well, almost) as fast.
----- UPDATE 4/30 -------
Green light for tonight's show. Arrington says Marvel has backed off its strong-arm tactics, claiming the ballyhoo was started by Oracle, the movie's promoter. Something about a possible conflict with another screening, blah blah blah. Arrington says he's accepted an apology from Ira Rubenstein, who's been behind the Executive VP desk of Marvel's brand new Global Digital Media Group for all of one week now. Good test for Mr. Rubenstein, to put out a fairly major blogosphere fire. Looks like Arrington's ire is now directed at Oracle, but I say Marvel still needs to go one step further. Free schwag at tonight's event, some free tickets (1000 maybe?) to give away to Techcrunch readers in the next couple of weeks ... something to show he understands and 'gets' new media, and the new consumer. Time to turn them into Passionate Consumers Mr. Rubenstein ... it's a drop in the bucket for your company, and you'll get scads of free - and positive - PR.
