Thursday May 22, 2008

Now that’s what I call a spin-off

“Sex and the City” is due to hit big screens May 30. Likely to be the biggest chick flick of the summer if not the year or even the decade, depending on how rabidly you watched the TV show, the movie version of the hit HBO series is spurring flocks of women to plan in anticipation of the opening.

In a recent New York Times article, reporter Michael Cieply highlights the spin-off events and ventures that are cropping up around the movie debut. Women are planning get-togethers and rendezvousing in distant states to see the film as a group. An enterprising company in Manhattan has started a “Sex and the City” tour around the town to show fans hotspots related to the show. Various brand names are aligning themselves with the film, hoping to capitalize on the buzz.

Personally, I don’t get all the hoopla. I never had HBO, so my experience with the series is limited to watching about a third of an episode once every other year or so when visiting someone whose cable package exceeds mine. I like what I see, don’t get me wrong, but I never quite got hooked.

But the marketing and the spin-offs that are cropping up lately are pretty brilliant, even if the ideas have been done before with other shows. Latching on to the buzz around a product that you had nothing to do with creating? Not the most creative way to earn a dollar, but I gotta give credit to people who find a way to ride somebody else’s wave without actually infringing on copyrights.

Posted by Camden Easterling Swindell at 01:22 PM in Media