That’s Right Warner Bros., Go Ahead and Fuck Batman

In a world filled with anything and everything vying for our attention, Titans has hit it right. Some say the “Fuck Batman” line that appeared in the trailer as over-the-top and too much, while others, like me, eat it up like an ice cream sundae.

When I first heard it, my immediate impression was “C’mon, Robin would never say that about Batman. This was the man who took him in, trained him, and turned him from a boy into a man.” However, after exactly 2 minutes, I came to my senses.

Robin, for all Batman did for him, was kept under the watchful eye of the world’s greatest detective. There was nothing that he could or couldn’t do without Batman finding out. Think 1984’s Big Brother without George Orwell.

Imagine that for a second…having your life scrutinized, being shown all of your shortcomings, and never being good enough.

“Fuck Batman” is right.

But Robin’s frustration isn’t the best part. Warner Bros. cashing in on his angst is. Look, Warner Bros. knows exactly what they’re doing and what they’re doing is clever marketing. Those two set the internet ablaze.

• Hate
• Animosity
• Horror
• Disgust
• Anger

And so many more emotions littered social media like my dogs litter the ground after a good meal. For all it is or isn’t worth, I am impressed. 

So impressed

It’s extremely difficult to get meaningful attention to your product or brand. Some go their entire lives trying but never succeeding. Warner Bros., DC, and Titans did it in just two words.

Two words!

Marketers know this and marketers capitalize on it. They know that we really don’t care about the overly angry Robin, the dark tones, or the overt brutality the trailer showed. They know that in today’s day and age, those things are expected. In a world that expects everything, marketers have to give the people the unexpected.

And they did.

Whether we like to admit it or not, trailers like this are a form of advertising. They are designed to captivate our interest in order to sell a product…the television show. And the way that this particular trailer sent the world into a frenzy did exactly this.

Even today, multiple weeks after it released I still find myself having conversations about it.

Cudos Warner Bros. Go ahead and Fuck Batman.

Titans is a live-action version of DC’s Teen Titans. It follows the story of Robin, Raven, Beast Boy, Starfire and more and is scheduled to premiere in 2018.

Cheers,

Joel