Dear Annabelle: Creation Marketing Team: Please Stop Ruining My Life

Viral marketing, when done right, can be extremely cool. In fact, I sometimes think I like the advertising at Austin’s SXSW festival (famous for its viral campaigns) better than the actual films I go to see.

For example:

Or the Tinder bot, “Ava,” that eventually led prospective dates to the Instagram page for Ex Machina.

(Image: Adweek)

But sometimes when companies invest in viral marketing, well, sometimes you end up with haunted dolls scattered through New York, and then I never leave my home again. And thus the people behind the upcoming Annabelle: Creation are to be fully blamed for my upcoming self-imposed isolation.

Haunted dolls are my literal nightmare. See:

And also:

So when I read that Annabelle was hiding 13 hidden spooky dolls throughout the Times Square Ripley’s Believe It or Not, I was amazed that someone had clearly gone into my actual nightmares and harvested them for advertising purposes.

But that’s fine. I could avoid a contained location. Dolls, you stay inside Ripley’s, and I’ll stay anywhere else on earth. To which the dolls replied:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? If I walked into a subway car and saw a haunted doll in front of me, I fully believe my soul would leave my body, and fly away from this planet forever. Do you remember that billboard for FX’s The Strain that people hated so much a few years ago? The one with a giant worm slithering into a giant eyeball? This is like that, but if the eyeball were fully tangibly manifested, and could be anywhere at any time.

And I do mean anywhere! Because now with this “Annabelle’s Presence” feature, you can edit creepy dolls into your own life.

PEOPLE! NO! As Charline said in our staff slack rant about how no one wants this to exist, THIS IS HOW YOU GET HAUNTED. Next up in Annabelle: Creation’s viral marketing campaign: Placing dolls in your home while you sleep! Entering your nightmares and possessing your soul with Annabelle’s angry demon spirit! Never sleeping again! #Marketing #brands #nightmares!

If you never hear from me again (pause for internet misogynists rejoicing), please know it’s just because I angered this movie’s PR team and have been possessed by a haunted doll, and am now living out my days in the Ripley’s basement.

(featured image: New Line Cinema)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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