All Your Snakes Really Do Belong To Us

Like Gary, I have no intention of seeing “Snakes on a Plane,” either (it was bad enough getting in and out of London last week — serpents couldn’t have made the aviation experience any worse).

But I know Gary’s biking all over the Bay Area in his Snakes t-shirt.

Seth makes a valid point, saying of the box office debacle, “just because people know who you are doesn’t mean they’re going to buy what you sell…the best way to succeed is to have a really great product.”

But there’s another dimension to this, too, one that’s very 1999: traffic does not equal conversions. Conversions are what you’re after. Ditto viral marketing. Nice to have all that chatter. But as someone who once marketed New Line films, I know that’s not what the company was after. At this point, they’d likely be happy for a slice of the Cafe Press t-shirt sales (though they’d never admit it).

Know anyone who’s seen it? I don’t. At the office, meanwhile, we’re still passing around stuff like All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us on YouTube.

All these snakes really do belong to us. Why? Because the CGM is better than the original could possibly hope to be. That wouldn’t have held true 10 years ago, but it’s true today.