So as you may or may not know, Tucker Max recently made his book into a movie, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. I was originally not planning on posting the trailer but now that I have commentary to go along with it, here it is:

I have been a Tucker Max reader since about freshman year of high school and have been following along with the movie production blog from the begining. Tucker has preached that he wants to do the movie “right,” where most major films have failed. He has been saying all along that is about the “creative” and the fans. For this he is doing a movie premiere tour and other simliar promotions, especially for the college aged demographic.

It appears to me that Tucker’s movie is going to rely heavily on word of mouth marketing. The movie website is very interactive and what not, but that’s not what I want to comment on. What I do want to comment on is the merchandise.

Question: So what’s really the point of selling merchandise?

Answer: Word of Mouth Marketing!

By having people wear the movie t-shirts, hang the movie poster in their dorm room or play beer pong with the Beer In Hell beer pong kit, the consumer becomes a walking, talking advertisment. They endorse the product (the movie in this case) encouraging everyone else they interact with to go see it. So basically you want as many people as possible wearing IHTSBIH t-shirts and using the IHTSBIH Beer Pong Kit.

The only problem with this is pricing: t-shirts are $15, movie poster is $5 and Beer Pong Kit is $20. Sure nothing is THAT expensive or outrageously priced, but they are most certainly making some profit off of merchandise after costs (production, packaging, shipping, etc). If they really wanted to maximize word of mouth marketing, they should have maximized distribution by minimizing price, thus reducing profit.

Will it really make a difference? I don’t know, but I think it will in a down economy when you are targeting college students and the like. If all the costs associated with the shirt is $5-9, then sell it for $10. I took the same approach with Jaredkproductions.com t-shirts. (I didn’t really open them for sale, but I did sell them to a few good friends.) I charged no more than cost because my profit is measured in website/blog hits (for the time being), not dollars and cents. I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell’s profit is certainly measured in dollars and cents, but the majority of the profit is going to come from the movie being a hit and selling lots of tickets, not merchandising.

Note: Of course I plan on seeing this movie and in no way did I want to bash the movie or Tucker, I just wanted to share some insight on word of mouth marketing in relation to his movie.

I plan on attending the UT-Austin premiere for those who care…