It’s an all too common marketing technique in the world of #Brands: Getting fans way too pumped up for an announcement that ultimately isn’t build-up worthy.

This week we’re seeing two mistakes by two of the biggest #Brands out there, Marvel and Harry Potter.

On Wednesday the Marvel social media accounts shared the following teaser:

“Tomorrow,” it warns cryptically with a date and time. Wow! Surely it’s going to be a big deal! This Twitter account, and other social media accounts, have been used to announce major news for the MCU in the past, so surely this teaser will live up to other big announcements.

Nope.. turns out the announcement was for a video game. Notice how many more likes and retweets the teaser tweet received versus the actual announcement. The teaser did not live up to the news.

Last week, the official Harry Potter social media accounts began teasing an announcement with the hashtag #FollowTheSpiders. It was shared on Pottermore, the official Harry Potter, and WB Studio Tour social media accounts. They launched a whole new Instagram account for it:

The announcement is coming Friday night, and in all likelihood the news will be about a new exhibit at the Harry Potter Studio Tour in England. Uh… okay? That’s not a big enough deal to hype fans up for two weeks. A very small percentage of the fandom will ever get to see it in person, and new exhibits at a Studio Tour which already has lots of exhibits is not a big deal.

Lots of brands do this, big and small. But they do it at the risk of becoming the boy who cried wolf. We’ll stop getting excited for announcements if we know you’re going to be dropping news that ultimately isn’t hype-worthy. And then what’s the point of trying to hype us up?

Save your teases for news that is truly worthy of an announcement. If you’re about to reveal that Chris Evans has signed up for his *final* MCU movie, or that J.K. Rowling is finally publishing a Harry Potter Encyclopedia, then yes, you can spend days or weeks hyping up an announcement date. If it’s only going to appeal to a small section of the fandom, then just announce it without any advance notice.