In politics and marketing, there is a term known as “Astroturfing”.  It is the process of artificially creating a grassroots campaign.  The idea is that the business makes it appear that a groundswell among the people is spontaneously happening.  They want the public to believe that their peers are really making an effort to support the cause, in order to get them to join the cause.  The hope is that enough people join the effort, and it becomes a real thing.

A horror example of an attempted “Astroturfing” would be Bloody-Disgusting’s campaign to save the ‘Midnight Meat Train’.  The Midnight Meat Train is a film based on a short story by Clive Barker.  The film itself had little mass appeal, and had no business being a wide theatrical release.  When the announcement was made that the film was going to be test-marketed in discount theaters, Bloody-Disgusting launched the most self-righteous campaign that the internet horror universe has ever seen, putting themselves out there as a savior of the film.  Petitions were made, and e-mail campaigns were started.  They went so far as to inform the studio of their campaign, in an obvious attempt to curry favor with them.  When the film flopped, it became clear there was no real groundswell, just generated hype.

A more successful Astroturfing campaign has been done by ‘Repo: The Genetic Opera’.  Director Darren Lynn Bousman declared his film a cult classic before anyone saw it, going so far as comparing it to ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’.  He set up a website, and built a community around a film no one had seen.  He coined this community ‘The Repo Army’.  Fans are encouraged to ‘be part of the team’ and do ’stunts’ to help promote the film.  A cult-like culture was created, and not liking the film would lead to certain exile from the ‘Army’.

One has to ask, where was Mr. Bousman and his desire to form an online horror community before he had a product to sell?  When he was directing Saw 2 and 3, that spirit of community was largely absent.  Then again, Saw 2 and 3 were just jobs.  ‘Repo’ is Bousman’s pet project, so all the stops were pulled.

The idea of Astroturfing goes back to the earliest days of marketing, so it is not exactly new.  The internet has created a whole new environment for this type of marketing due to its interactivity, however.  Never before have we seen entire marketing campaigns built around unreleased films.  Is this the sign of things to come, or just another idea that will come and go?  We will find out soon enough.