Using viral campaigns as a way of promoting the latest film releases are nothing new. As far back as 1999, The Blair Witch Project had the world fooled into thinking that what it was seeing was actually found footage. Recent years have also seen both online excitement and commercial reward generated by campaigns for likes of The Dark Knight (2008), District 9 (2009), Inception (2010) and Tron: Legacy (2010). Yet despite the commercial motivation, most fans appear to be enjoying the shift.
Viral movie marketing encourages engagement with cinema, wider conversation and expands the worlds of movies people love. Much more than just a trailer, poster or an A-list roster, these campaigns use shared user experiences to lead fans on a digital treasure hunt, scouring the internet for clues regarding upcoming movie projects. It's a game an increasing number of studios and film makers are playing.
Whilst X-Men: Days Of Future Past isn't scheduled for release until 2014, the marketing activity has already begun with a series of anti-mutant posters and a fake TV commercial for Trask Industries. But how effective are these campaigns really?
Today it would seem that no superhero film release or science fiction blockbuster is complete without a huge marketing effort filling in the back stories of key characters and the apparent organisations involved. For 20th Century Fox's X-Men: Days Of Future Past, Los Angeles based agency Ignition Creative has built a detailed website for Trask Industries, the company supposedly responsible for building the giant Sentinels, a robot army bent on capturing and destroying all mutants.
The website presents Trask Industries as "the world's leading full-spectrum genetic security and containment company, Trask Industries continues to uncover new ways to control the mounting X-gene threat. We are proud to bring decades of experience, along with 118,000 innovative minds as we continue to secure human freedoms in every nation on Earth. Our goal is to solve tomorrow's problems, today."
20th Century Fox have also released their latest viral site for Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes, somewhat ironically dedicated to educating us on the dangers of a Simian Flu virus, the same chemical that enhanced the apes intelligence but proved to be fatal to humans in Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes (2011). The website also goes on to explain all the symptoms of the disease, as well as an interactive map showing a time line of its spread.
These increasingly elaborate campaigns have production values equalled only by the films they are promoting. Most notable of these perhaps, was the campaign for Ridley Scott's Prometheus (2012), which included a fake TED Talk by character Peter Weyland, and a promotional video launching the latest range of emotive androids from Weyland Industries.
Whether it be Guy Pearce as grandstanding techno-mogul Peter Weyland speaking at the 2023 TED Conference, or the chilling advert hawking the Weyland Corporation's new emotionally aware android David 8, played with sycophantic naivety by Michael Fassbender, these campaigns made us want to know more, to tell our friends and – the holy grail of viral marketing – to get involved.
But are these increasingly complex and costly productions merely preaching to the converted? Marc Berry Reid, regional director of digital communications agency Way To Blue certainly thinks so. "The big question for me is how can viral campaigns break out of just appealing to the core audience. They are typically adopted by the 'fan boy' audience who, it could be argued, are going to see the film anyway. Avengers Assemble is a good example of a movie that, even though it screamed for one, had no elaborate viral campaign. Did the lack of one impact the movie? The box office so far doesn't seem to suggest so."
Case in point, the immaculate, award winning campaign for Tron: Legacy failed to put bums on seats, while James Cameron's Avatar had no viral campaign to speak of. Either way, you can be sure that a good viral campaign will be deemed central to successful movie marketing for some time to come.
Dave B
Reference: creativereview.co.uk
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