Movie Marketing Madness creates one monster of a piece on Cloverfield.

Chris at Movie Marketing Madness always does a tremendous job with his opening-weekend analyses of movie marketing campaigns, but he has created something damn near transcendent with today’s Cloverfield article. Not only does Chris go deeply into the wildly immersive, is-it-real-or-aint-it production of the Cloverfield campaign – many elements of which I never tracked down before – but he also provides some thoughtful and expert opinion on just how well J.J. Abrams and Paramount pulled this whole thing off.

One excerpt, for example:

But by, essentially, giving the online audience a regular supply of new rawhides to chew on Abrams and Paramount were able to earn their loyalty and turn them from casual or even devoted fans into surrogate marketing agents.

That is why I read MMM every day: because more than just pointing out what’s cool and what works, Chris always brings it home to the engagement of a given movie’s audience, and how effective the campaign may or may not be, based on how much value the movie marketers have placed on the involvement of the people whose money they’d like to be given.

I’ve said this in this space very often: movie studios tend to think that we are extremely stupid, so much so that they reduce most marketing tools to the very basic triggers and most familiar and comfortable elements that they believe will compel us to hand over our money.

• Rich asshole + serene and wise Morgan Freeman = feel-good buddy comedy
• Pratfalls + kissing in the rain + pop song in the trailer = safe romantic comedy
• Barely-clad starlet + quiet moment in the dark/shower/alley + beastie jumping out from nowhere = horror movie

This is exactly why trailer mash-ups became so popular: because we as an audience have figured out all the tricks now. We see the clichés coming a mile away and we’re prepared for the conditioning that we’re supposed to experience. The fact that we’re smarter hasn’t quite filtered throughout Hollywood yet, and some would complain that Cloverfield has gone too far to the other side in its reality-bending, too-cutely-self-conscious tactics. But I admire the hell out of the way it’s been crafted and I’m going to do my best to see it this weekend. Yes, on opening weekend.

Because I’m pretty sure that if I wait much longer, the whole frigging thing will get casually spoiled everywhere I look.