While you were sleeping over the weekend, Black Mirror dropped its sixth season–its first in four long years. And one of its six episodes comes with an experiential marketing campaign that’s pretty…well, “awful.”
One of its most popular episodes is “Joan is Awful,” where Joan (Annie Murphy) leads a humdrum life with a few incidents she would prefer to keep secret. Surprisingly, she discovers this popular TV app called Streamberry has launched this “day in the life” drama adaptation of her life. And it’s televised within minutes of her actions, from eating cereal to cheating on her fiancé. The catch is Salma Hayek portrays her in the show.
As Season 6 picks up steam in headlines, the Netflix and Black Mirror marketing teams decided to have some fun with this tweet and an awful experience all your own.
Sign up for Streamberry today! https://t.co/cIARZVSlIf
— Black Mirror (@blackmirror) June 20, 2023
Black Mirror Made Awful a Good (and Bad) Thing
Fun, right? You put your name and image in the Black Mirror marketing engine and now you have a couple of downloadables and shareables to show your friends. However, if you do some digging around the links on the Streamberry site, you’ll find a few tongue-firmly-planted-in-cheek fine print. How about your name and likeness, which is much of the problem Joan faces in the first episode.
So, that seems permanent. Again, if you have seen the first episode of Black Mirror, Season 6, you know the joke. But this is why we can’t have nice things. Because now, fans caught wind of the joke and are now having fun poling at the beautiful people.
First up, the UK’s Daily Mail thought a test run of gossip mill athletes would be suitable…
And then, hilarity ensued as ne’er-do-wells targeted various things about life, like
Politics, foreign…
…and domestic
Self-deprecation
Bodily issues
And, of course, getting the finger pointed back at them
Featured Image Credit: Nick Wall/Netflix
Since he saw ‘Dune’ in the $1 movie theater as a kid, this guy has been a lover of geek culture. It wasn’t until he became a professional copywriter, ghostwriter, and speechwriter that he began to write about it (a lot).
From the gravitas of the Sith, the genius of Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, or the gluttony of today’s comic fan, SPW digs intelligent debate about entertainment. He’s also addicted to listicles, storytelling, useless trivia, and the Oxford comma. And, he prefers his puns intended.