Creating a movie these days can cost millions of dollars, and in order to recuperate those losses, a lot of marketing has to be done. I know that I addressed what went wrong in my last blog, but allow me to elaborate from an SEO standpoint what should have been done.
Let’s take a look at what happened and what Disney did in response to the wake that was caused by Rachel Zegler. The aforementioned Zegler brought to the public eye her identity politics, including but not limited to her stance on the Israeli-Pakistani conflict, her thoughts on the 2024 election, as well as her stance towards the political right. This in turn created an enormous amount of online discourse, as seen on Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, and Facebook. Now, let’s take a look at what Disney did in the midst of this online turmoil. They proceeded to allow Zegler to partake in public press interviews, as well as Disney allowing her and Gal Gadot, both of which were on the opposite side of the Mediterranean conflict, to be in open conflict online. Due to the number of replies, comments, shares, and likes/dislikes all of these online videos, news stories, and posts have gotten, the good press has been consumed by the bad press, which now paints Disney’s movie in a very bad light, regardless of the fact of whether the product itself is bad or not.
Moral of the story: be careful as to who or what you allow to touch your product. Be generous and compassionate, but also be careful and conscious of your surroundings and reputation.
3 Responses
I love the way you took this blog post! I like that you critiqued the work and talked about how the good press was consumed by the bad press.
This was a very interesting blog post to read. I would have never thought SEO would affect something like a movie production. But, it makes sense why it would affect a movie. SEO is everywhere and its super important to understand the ins and outs of it. Great Post!
You brought up a really important point about how online discourse can completely shift a brand’s image, regardless of the actual quality of the product. It’s interesting to see how negative SEO from controversy can outweigh even the best marketing efforts. Definitely a reminder that reputation management is crucial in the digital age.