An amazing advertisement: Brought to you by Justin.TV | Hacker News Reader

An amazing advertisement: Brought to you by Justin.TV

justin.tv

23 pointsdcurtis15 comments

Very, very impressed. Still not going to see the movie, but props to the advertising folks who came up with that.

It's interesting to note what kind of audience they're targeting by observing the screen names and messages in the chat box...

Is this the future of advertising on justin.tv? If it is (assuming they don't overdo it), I'm totally for it. I actually kind of want to see that movie now.

Entertainment + Advertisement very rarely go together, but Justin.TV seems to have done it here.

Ohh jeez. That was awesome. You guys are totally breaking new ground on user engagement.

Pretty cool, but you kind of gave it away with that headline.

Could anybody summarize it? I can't see a thing, the site is so slow.

[spoiler] It starts like a regular justin.tv feed, with a "live" chat on the side and everything. A guy somehow got a "parasitic vine" stuck inside his arm, and he explains that. To appease the "live" chatters, he shows it to the camera. Then he notices his eye is bloodshot, shows it to the camera, and passes out and a movie trailer comes up.

Thanks - I could watch other streams on justin.tv, but never this ad (tried several times throughout the day).

I don't get it. I went there and it was just some donkey talking.

Ah, now I see. I think they might lose a lot of people (like they did me) by not getting to the meat quick enough.

To be effective, I think you have to believe it's a real live stream. A 15 second skit probably wouldn't be that convincing.

Actually, I hit the back button because I thought it was a live stream... my thinking was that whatever had been interesting earlier (when the link was posted) had probably long passed.

Yeah, it's an interesting problem.

not impressed not catchy not aesthetic

Can you give an example of a similar ad you think is better?

That was my first reaction, but look at what they've got to work with. It's a cheesy-looking horror movie, with a no-name director and (mostly) no-name aging child actors. Your only hope at advertising it is to do something weird and hope it sticks. For all its cheesiness, this was a novel approach.

Compare the iPhone. The ads were "picture of iPhone ... fade to Apple logo", and people lined up around the block for it. You don't need much from an ad when your product sells itself.

I knew a guy who was a recruiter for some podunk university in the midwest, who was very good at it. One of the top universities tried to hire him, but he turned them down: what skill does it take to convince somebody to go to MIT or Harvard?

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