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olePigeon · Oct 28, 2006, 12:53 PM

Universal recently decided to start demanding back-licensing on Serenity promotional material, up to $9,000, from Firefly & Serenity fans, and asking them to actually stop promoting the movie and series. Since Universal asked Firefly & Serenity fans to participate in viral marketing, we ran out and did everything we could to get people to see the movie and the series. We made t-shirts, websites, flyers, filk music, charity runs, everything.

So, in response to Universal's complete reversal on asking the fans for promotions, then charging them for it, there's now a website set up for an Invoice to Universal...

The (Browncoat) Invoice

...billing them for our time and services marketing and promoting the movie. It's currently up to $1,393,875.

Universal seemed to have forgotten how viral marketing works. It's more personal, person to person, spreading the information and getting people to become excited about it. Because of its nature, anyone being stung by Universal is a friend of another Firefly fan (or 20!)

It's a tight knit group. If something bad happens, they all hear it.

You can't stop the signal.

OwlBoy · Oct 28, 2006, 01:06 PM

Meh, Universal.

-Owl

slpdLoad · Oct 28, 2006, 01:20 PM

turtle777 · Oct 28, 2006, 02:47 PM

Now THAT would be funny if they'd actually find some crazy enough lawyers to take that to court. A big gamble, yes, but maybe worthwile.

Only in Amaraca (sic!)

-t

Kevin · Oct 28, 2006, 02:54 PM

Classic bait and switch.

Rev-O · Oct 28, 2006, 04:36 PM

Shiny!

ghporter · Oct 28, 2006, 07:13 PM

Universal needs a lesson in what the property they're worried about is about. Can't stop the signal... And they wouldn't HAVE a property without the Browncoats; it was the fans that forced the correct business decision. Yet again, I might add; this has a number of precedents, going back at least to 1967. NBC and Paramount figured it out and Paramount is still rolling in it. Universal should get used to it.

JoshuaZ · Oct 28, 2006, 10:19 PM

The show is still canceled.

andi*pandi · Oct 29, 2006, 05:06 PM

completely crazy. those fans created shirts back when no one else was. 3 years later corporate gets a clue and want to retroactively get paid for ideas they never had? nope. They didn't do the job, they don't get paid. And truth be told, I like the quality of the fan-made shirts more than the hot topic official ones. More original, better quality.

Thing is, fox/universal milked us at the fan forums for ideas for shirts. We gave away those ideas to them in return for a movie. And they didn't even make the best of them.

ink · Oct 29, 2006, 05:48 PM

Originally Posted by olePigeon

Universal seemed to have forgotten how viral marketing works. It's more personal, person to person, spreading the information and getting people to become excited about it. Because of its nature, anyone being stung by Universal is a friend of another Firefly fan (or 20!)

Assuming they ever knew what it was in the first place.

Has anyone here ever filled out a Nielsen survey? I don't know anyone who has, which leads me to wonder who they are polling to get their data.

ghporter · Oct 29, 2006, 07:49 PM

Nielsen once sent me a "diary" to record my TV viewing for either a week or a month, I forget. In any case it happened to be at a point when I was sleeping, going to work, coming home and sleeping again, repeat over and over and over... You get the picture. The TV was on for The Weather Channel long enough to find out what kind of crappy weather to expect and I was out the door.

The problem with this is that there was NO WAY to indicate that I was not having a "normal" viewing period to reflect in the diary. That makes me believe that they conglomerate all their data, no matter how goofy or unrepresentative it might be, and thus come up with goobered data.

Take a look at Star Trek in 1967. Nielsen said that NOBODY watched it. The tons (literally) of mail Paramount and NBC got said otherwise, so they renewed it for another year. That they cut the budget so that writers with good story ideas were more scarce is another matter; what counts is that Nielsen didn't know Jack about Star Trek, and they started modifying their sampling to include different demographics beyond "viewer" and "nonviewer." They need to do that again, only they need to pay attention to time shifters, Tivo users, and other people who don't let some exec in Hollywood schedule their days.

Off the soapbox now. It's safe to come out!