Sopranos is Interactive Marketing at it Finest

What everyone seems to be talking about this morning, and which I can't get out of my head, is the Sopranos finale that was on HBO last night. If you Tivoed it and haven't watched it yet, then you may not want to read this post or anything else online today. I wasn't planning on writing about the Sopranos, but then I read this post, Sopranos Finale Crashes HBO Web Site in Outrage, by the editor of Adotas, Jason Jaramillo, and it just got me thinking about it again and adding a comment. Jason says the following:

"While the finale is the story here, the interesting point is that the ongoing convergence of television and online media have reached new levels. Fans absorb the content of a show like the Sopranos on one medium and then immediately utilize the web as their voice to express points of view. Audiences see the web and television as symbiotic and the response to the Sopranos show simply reinforces how the two are becoming very interdependent."

Now I wrote a post the day after the first episode of the final season began about HBO's interactive promotion, Whack-A-Soprano Instant Win Game that ePrize developed for them. So, I guess it's fitting for me to write about the Sopranos again the day after the final episode. I am after all, like the rest of my family, huge Sopranos fans.

I'm thinking of now maybe developing a new interactive promotion for all of us Sopranos fans called  "Whack David Chase". We could use the same instant-win game as HBO developed where we get chances to hit him on the head with a virtual mallet. Wouldn't that be fun?  Or we could start a consumer generated promotional contest in which we can submit essays or maybe videos of how we interrupt the last seconds of the episode should have been. The judges would select a winner who could win the chance to have their episode of the ending broadcast on HBO, and then meet David Chase to give him all a piece of our minds.

Anyhow, as I said in my comment to Adotas, I too like so many others last night had my heart racing like crazy thinking that Tony and his wife and kids were all gonna get whacked sitting in a diner listening to Journey no less!. Then when the screen went black with no sound, I jumped up looking for my remote thinking my high definition cable channel went out while yelling some obscenities at the same time! I then went online to check a blog from NJ.com by Alan Sepinwall that I had been reading during the season to find out if I had missed a shooting massacre. Instead I found out that everyone else was just as upset as I was and I apparently was one of the many thousands that went from TV to Online.

So, you just really gotta give David Chase credit for driving both our emotions and our actions. He sure knows exactly how to do what all of us promotional marketers are trying to do everyday...hit that emotional cord and get someone to act. It is a case of interactive marketing at it's finest. Thank you David!

Comments

[Fran "Gambino"]

........and we are still talking about it. What an avalanche. We really have to just fuggetaboutit and say ciao. What a great ride it was.