You may recall that, at the end of March, Warner Bros. studios did a new deal with Blockbuster that seemed likely to confuse the hell out of consumers. That’s because Warner Bros., in its backwards-looking wisdom, had already done deals with both Netflix and Redbox to not make new release movies available to rent until 28 days after their release. There is no good reason for this, other than it pisses off customers all around, and makes them less interested or inclined to bother watching Warner Bros. movies (hint to WB: you have competitors).
But the Blockbuster deal seemed confusing — because most consumers wouldn’t be following these silly deals and wouldn’t understand why a movie had been “released” but wasn’t available via their favorite rental service. Apparently, Blockbuster’s answer to all this is to mock Netflix and Redbox for not carrying new releases. Seriously. Reader Daylyn sends in the following ad he recently saw that points out that Netflix and Redbox don’t carry this movie:
Apparently, this is all part of Blockbuster’s new WB-partnered advertising campaign: “hey, the movie studios screwed over our competitors! rent from us!” Looking around, it appears a few others have noticed this campaign as well, which went into place quite quickly after the WB deal was announced.
Permalink | Comments | Email This Story