As one of the primary targets of your campaign, (an original fan who was denounced for not embracing the new series), I feel it appropriate to express my disgust with your tactics. If promotion means lying and insulting people, you certainly excelled. Slandering the internet fanbase may have made the franchise a few extra bucks but it also showed a complete lack of character. The fact that you now brag about this conduct as innovative does not speak well for your personal character.

Having been the target of your campaign, I’d have to say that you caused an unusual amount of strife to a number of folks who merely expressed their honest opinions. Labeling sincere people as “bad influencers” doesn’t excuse extreme bad conduct from people like you. You title this “marketing”. I call it lying and abandoning some basic moral principles your mother should have taught you.

Further, I truly wonder just how much this influenced the show’s outcome. It drew a crowd because it was called “Battlestar Galactica”. It kept some of that crowd because they saw possibilities in what they saw. I think it likely that slandering posters on the Internet did little more than drive away a handful of potential fans who might have warmed up to the project had they been treated with more respect.

I hope in the end, when you look back, you feel it was worth it, — although based on your writing, you obviously do.

Respectfully,

Russell Sanders

I don’t know “who hired us.” I was just a member of a team who worked on the online part of the campaign. I was just a project manager and not a Brand Manager, so I didn’t have connection with the client. The client was Sci-Fi and not the producers, as I recall. The firm I worked for was retained by the Sci-Fi channel and so we were promoting the miniseries.

I never met either Ron Moore or David Eick and didn’t even know of them outside of the task I was given to try to textually convinced the fans of the 1978-80 series that it was better for us to embrace the new interpretation — and the Cylon box set of the old series — rather than holding on for BSG to be picked up in the “authentic” way that Star Trek was.

I don’t know who Ted Gorospe is. I was not involved in the Galactica2003.com website in any way.

I hope that was useful. I am afraid I was a junior member of the team at the time.

Was it Ron Moore and/or David Eick?

Did Ron Moore and/or David Eick have contact with you guys during that period?

Did you coordinate your efforts with people like Ted Goropse, of galactica2003.com?

How far up the food chain did orders for these guys go?

Let’s get on the phone some time soon and reminisce.

I enjoyed your observations from the inside!