• by Shankar Gupta , October 7, 2005

When Universal Pictures wanted to build buzz for "Serenity," a movie based on the cancelled Fox TV series "Firefly," the studio's PR agency turned to the blogosphere to mobilize the show's small but hard-core fan base.

Grace Hill Media--the Studio City, Calif. PR firm that also promoted "The Passion of the Christ" and "The Exorcism of Emily Rose"--set up pre-screenings, dubbed "Serenity Blogger Bonanzas," around the country for bloggers.

Blogging giants like Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit.com--one of the most highly trafficked blogs on the Internet--were invited and attended screenings, alongside bloggers with traffic numbers in the lowly double digits. Some bloggers received direct contact from Grace Hill and a "confirmed" seat, whereas others were simply invited to the prescreening without guaranteed seating.

This reporter, who also authors an independent, lightly trafficked (about 30 hits per day) blog, was among those who attended.

Grace Hill required that bloggers who attended the screenings post a pre-written paragraph about the movie to their blog, and also link to the movie's site.

Those requirements, while controversial among independent-minded bloggers, apparently helped get the movie's name mentioned in the blogosphere. As of Thursday afternoon, a Technorati search on the phrase "Serenity movie" returned almost 14,000 blog posts, compared to 1,538 posts returned on the phrase "Flightplan movie." The two films opened on the same date last week.

Intelliseek's BlogPulse also revealed a massive spike in blog discussions that peaked on Oct. 1--the day after the movie's official release--with 1.067 percent of the blogosphere buzzing about "Serenity," compared to the .054 percent buzzing about "Flightplan."

Such mentions in the blogosphere can generate tremendous word-of-mouth, said blog champion Steve Rubel, a public relations consultant with CooperKatz. "What they did here is, they went to a direct response medium in the bloggers knowing that a screening was going to get good word-of-mouth going, and get people to click through," he said. "The people that read blogs tend to be influentials who spread the word to others. It can have a rippling effect."

Some bloggers, however, took a dim view of Grace Hill's mandate to include information about the movie as a condition of attending the screening. "I give them kudos for including bloggers in their viral efforts. But they don't get this kind of social marketing--bloggers who sign up for tickets are already interested in the movie--they don't need to be pushed," wrote Nellie Lide of New Persuasion, a marketing blog. She did not attend the Grace Hill screening.

Last week, Grace Hill founder Jonathan Bock said he didn't want to comment on the company's public relations strategy before the weekend box office numbers were in. This week, Bock's office did not return calls for comment. Universal Pictures also did not return calls for comment.

"Serenity" pulled in $10.1 million for its opening weekend, trailing the opening of "Flight Plan," which pulled in $14.8 million.