During the last time more and more movies and shows tend to use additional ways of marketing than “just” the obvious ones (like movie posters, trailers, commercials, etc.). More and more studios use different social platforms like Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, etc. to promote their products. But it´s not only social platforms, the studios become really creative and start fresh “keep-in-mind” promotions.

Since i´ve been fascinated about the creativity of some movies in the near past i wanted to point out some nice examples.

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Cloverfield

J.J. Abrams is not only a genius as producer and director, but also a marketing guru. The first rumours about Cloverfield spread long before any details about the story or whatever else was published by the studio, they really managed to keep secrets to the mass.

The first appearance of the movie where different untitled trailers, so the audience just got some pieces and had to figure out what it is all about by theirselves. Different websites where developed to market the film, but the only “official” one was 1-18-08.com (which is the starting date of the movie).

Another campaign was the fictional drink Slusho! from the Japanese soft drink company that hires Rob, the protagonist, for a job in marketing. Some of the lead characters also had MySpace profiles so that the audience had the chance to gather bits and pieces of the plot (as a covered in a previous post those social media platforms are more and more used for fictional characters).

Here are some links how the Cloverfield virus spread over the time:

What is Cloverfield?: The viral marketing begins after the first trailer has been shown.

The mystery will be revealed: A radio advertisment announcing that the mystery will be revealed.

Viral poster and TV ads: “I saw it. It´s alive. It´s huge.”, the viral marketing goes on.

New trailer: A new trailer and a Times Sqare Billboard.

Destroying Chaui Station: A great new campaign spread around the net: fictional news reports about the Chaui Station (an oil rig in Japan) that has been destroyed. The reports where found in Spanish, Italian and German. A day later they also appeared in French, Japanese, Russian and English here.

Robs suprise party: And again, another great idea: Cloverfield and Myspace throw a suprise party for the protagonist, Rob, one day before the movie starts. You had to provide your name and telephone number and the winners are contacted by phone. After the party they went to see the movie, here is a report of the night: Rob´s party report.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

For this new show Fox began the first teaser during primetime on September 27, 2007 by just showing to red dots on the screen that disappeared after some moments. These dots where revealed to be the eyes of a terminator in the next teaser starting two weeks later.

Since the brand Terminator is known by actually everyone this was a good tactic, you probably couldn´t determine what those red dots really ment from the beginning, but if you thought about it, or at last when the second teaser started, it was clear what they wanted to promote.

While this kind of marketing is not so unusual i really liked the next step:
The TV Addict is a famous blog on all kinds of shows, one day he received a FedEx delivery containing this letter and a key. Obviously it had to do with the new Terminator show, but what was it really about?

After two weeks of guessing what it could mean he received another delivery, a black box which the key he received would open.

Inside the box Fox placed a DVD with the first two episodes and a USB stick with some additional video clips. This is one really cool viral marketing gag, you can read the full story here.

The Dark Knight

In May 2007 Warner Bros launched the website I believe in Harvey Dent featuring the fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent. It went on with another website, here a quote from Wikipedia:

A “vandalized” version, “I believe in Harvey Dent too”, was also set up, where e-mails sent by fans slowly removed pixels, revealing the first official image of the Joker. The page was replaced with many “Haha”s and a hidden message that said “see you in December”.

During the Comic-Con 2007 the website WhySoSerious.com was launched and started a scanvenger hunt for fans all over the internet, they where able to unlock a teaser trailer and a new photo from the Joker.

In October another scavenger hunt started and unlocked audio recordings of the Joker, after that campaign another viral site was launched: www.rorysdeathkiss.com. On that website fans could submit pictures of them costumed as the joker, those who sent in photos received a copy of The Gotham Times, a fictional newspaper of Gotham City.

In December 2008 Warner Bros sent out promotional packages from “Gotham Novelties Inc.” with a nice box that contains a Joker card and a really awesome T-Shirt. You can read the full story here.

In January 2008 another really funny billboard hit the roads, different pages of The Gotham Times where plastered on a large board with a Joker graffity.

The Virus spreads

I´m really curious what new viral marketing is up next, there are great ideas of word-of-mouth advertising and the internet is a perfect place for that. I hope to see new campaigns in the future, probably some of my readers have other examples of great marketing for movies…