You’ve got to love a good viral. Many of you will have seen Brand Republic’s article this week on the efficacy of this type of marketing, which includes a liberal dose of Goviral’s favourite videos to be leveraged as part of a wider viral campaign. Many of these are fantastic, with the 15million views of Nike’s ‘Write the Future’ video testament to their pulling power and creativity.
Assuming this list managed to whet your appetite, how about spending a few minutes with Ignite’s view of the viral game-changers of the last 10 years. Lots of things you’ll have seen, but also, I’d wager some stuff that may have passed you by. It’s a liberal mix of videos, pictures and applications, but all check a single box, namely, would you send this on to a mate?
As you may have noticed by the none-too-subtle references in my last couple of Synergy blogs, I’m a bit of a film fan, so to see ‘The Blair Witch Project’ so high up on Ignite’s list reminded me just how much of an upsurge of viral marketing campaigns related to film releases there has been over the past few years.
Ask most people and they’ll probably agree that 1999’s ‘The Blair Witch Project’ was certainly one of the first films to really embrace viral marketing, and use the internet to create a genuine phenomenon. They’d be right, and the figures speak for themselves: though the production costs are often enthusiastically undercooked by the media (in fact coming in at a total of around $600,000), the movie nonetheless went on to gross almost $250million worldwide, at the time making this one of the most profitable independent films ever made. Incredibly, this was recently eclipsed by the similarly spooksome ‘Paranormal Activity‘, which has to date taken over $190million from a mere $15,000 production. Now that is frightening.
Since then viral has formed a part of a great many movie releases, but perhaps the most important question is how did Blair Witch’s original campaign come together? Using the internet as a subversive source of pseudo-information to create and perpetuate the myth of the Blair Witch. Coupled with the movie’s amateur documentary feel, blurring the lines between actors and characters, it sucked you in and creeped you out.
Without doubt the Blair Witch team exploited first-mover advantage – to be fair, in a year that saw the release of ‘Star Wars: Episode I’, ‘Toy Story 2′ and ‘The Matrix’, they needed it. In fact, ‘Blair Witch’ ended up as the 14th biggest movie at the box office in 1999, out-grossing ‘American Pie’ (okay, bad use of the phrase ‘out-grossing’), ‘Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Fight Club’, to name but a few memorable titles.
So what about the pretenders to the throne – the viral campaigns that followed in the Blair Witch’s shadowy wake?
‘Cloverfield‘ is one you might mention. With a budget of $22million, it could hardly be termed a small movie, but the air of mystery that was cultivated around its release was pure viral: the teaser trailer featuring directly before producer JJ Abrams’ preceding major release, Mission: Impossible III; the drip-feed of subversive shots of a decapitated Statue of Liberty; and what the hell was a ‘Cloverfield’ anyway…? As with ‘Blair Witch’, ‘Cloverfield’ was based on the premise of found footage – but this time on a Hollywood scale – with a viral campaign that built intrigue ahead of the big reveal, mirroring the natural plot crescendo of many a monster movie before it. Disappointing or not (anyone see the finale of ‘Lost’ – also by JJ Abrams?) – it was definitely a success.
Conversely, you’ve got the Samuel L Jackson vehicle, ‘Snakes on a Plane’. Infamously inheriting its title from the classic Hollywood elevator pitch (Ridley Scott originally described Alien as ‘Jaws in Space’), the online community went wild over it. A slew of parodies and spoofs, such as ‘Cats on a Plane’, ‘Snakes who missed the Plane’ and even ‘Steaks on a Train’ were released on video sharing sites in the lead-up to the movie’s opening. Unfortunately, a turkey is still a turkey (even if it’s on a plane), and, in spite of a spirited effort by its marketing team, no one went to see it.
Various others have followed, including ‘Spiderman 2′, ‘Iron Man 2′, and, most notably ‘The Dark Knight’ (yes, you guessed it, ‘Batman 2′).
This last example represented viral marketing with a difference: there was no doubt from the off that the sequel to Christopher Nolan’s successful franchise reboot was going to be big – it didn’t need a clever campaign behind it to break any records. However, where it differed was in its very specific approach, with its careful exploration of The Joker, Batman’s enigmatic nemesis, allowing interested fans the opportunity to glimpse this character’s dark, unsettling roots. Importantly, though, ‘Why So Serious?’, the resulting ARG (Alternate Reality Game) encouraged not only online discussion, but offline, real-time participation in live events across an estimated 177 countries worldwide. Millions of people wanting to talk about your product, coupled with a career-defining performance from Heath Ledger saw ‘The Dark Knight’ have the biggest opening weekend in history (taking $158million).
And it’s the same team behind ‘Why So Serious?’ that are trying to repeat the trick for the upcoming Disney movie ‘Tron: Legacy’.
Not heard of it? That’s because it’s a sequel to ‘Tron’, cult sci-fi flick from way back in 1982. It was one of the earliest films to bring video games to the silver screen together, with a plot revolving around a games programmer, Kevin Flynn – a young Jeff Bridges – being sucked into a computer network (okay, it was no ‘Gandhi’), and notable for being omitted from the Best Visual Effects category at the 1982 Oscars on the grounds that many of the film’s special effects were computer-generated.
So why bother with viral marketing? I mean, if you’re Disney then surely you can just buy an audience via traditional media? Maybe the answer lies in who they’re targeting with the ‘Flynn Lives’ campaign – key influencers in the geekosphere: tech bloggers, sci-fi critics and comic fanboys. As the kind of people who, like me, are naturally protective of cult movie IP, and therefore highly cynical about a money-spinning 3D sequel, this is a key demographic for Disney to engage with and convert. As such, the ‘Flynn Lives’ campaign started with an exchange of branded memorabilia, details of esoteric code to be cracked and secret web addresses with clues to real-world experiences, such as trailer screenings.
Disney are not technically buying love (although it’s definitely a transaction of sorts), but rather engaging with the sceptics and bartering for belief, in a bid to reclaim interest amongst the 1982 original’s fanbase.
So does that make this retroviral marketing…?
By Jonathan Izzard on June 15th, 2010
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