Everyone’s Favorite Oxymoron

Neologism Watch: Eventize

In today’s New York Times article about advance ticket sales for the early morning showings of The Dark Knight on July 18, we find this sentence:

“In the public mind, opening weekends have been eventized,” said Thomas Tull, the chairman of Legendary Pictures and an executive producer of “The Dark Knight.”

“Eventize” is not to be found in the online versions of either the Oxford English Dictionary or Merriam-Webster. It isn’t even in the dictionary at law.com! A search of the New York Times archives, though, does result in an additional citation — from “Box Office in a Box,” an article about DVD promotion, written by Jon Gertner and published on November 14, 2004. Gertner writes:

Feldstein and Peter Staddon often used a word I would hear a lot around Los Angeles: “eventize.” As in, “We really need to eventize the hell out of this release.” For the “Star Wars” debut on DVD, that meant parties, paparazzi, robots and a red-carpet treatment that mimicked in miniature the fanfare accompanying a big-screen theatrical opening. A boffo event, in short. 

There’s also a site called Eventize.com. Its tagline reads: “Promote Products and Services by turning them into Events!” The site promises that “Eventize.com does just what it claims it does. Eventize.com turns products and services into an event with the purpose of promoting and marketing it. Many hollywood marketing gurus are already eventizing their media products and realizing the huge benefits of in terms of promotion and marketing.”

Holy lousy language, Batman!