So you’ve seen the clips for the latest Judd Apatow movie. Nick from Freaks and Geeks and Veronica Mars were an item. She breaks it off with him to get together with some overtly hairy person from some horrid-looking band. He goes on a vacation with Jackie from That 70s Show to try to be sure he’s… yep, Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

So how is Universal ensuring that we don’t forget a split second of this plot? Well, they did an outdoor campaign telling Sarah Marshall that, yes, she does look fat in those jeans. Then they had their star character start a blog with daily updates – including video clips – on why he does hate Sarah Marshall. They even had Sarah’s new dream date create an official band myspace page.

So what’s the problem?

It falls a little flat.

Peter’s blog entries aren’t as well-scripted as Apatow’s lines for him no doubt will be, leaving the reader feeling like something almost funny just happened. The myspace page – while clever in theory – includes blog posts entitled “Me new lady is crazy sexy”, which no band in the world would feature on its myspace page. I mean, there’s no doubt that this is intended to be ridiculous, but to achieve that level of ridiculousity, Universal needs to own it – not let it feel like the marketing tool that it is.

While many observers wouldn’t notice such minutiae, isn’t it that minutiae that separates the hilarious from the mediocre? And isn’t that the communications message that Forgetting Sarah Marshall should be getting across?

As always, details.