Viral marketing strategies

Films of this generation have become more than just films, before a film is released films often create a fan a base which boosts the interest in the film using viral marketing. I have three examples of this which had very successful campaigns:



The Dark Knight



The Blair witch project

Cloverfield

 

These three films are recognised for the viral marketing campaigns, The Dark Knight although it is a batman film, the film focused more on the joker, before the film was released a fictional place was newspaper was created called the gotham times, which is where most people know the batman character is situated. This started the mystery and the craze which is the joker. A website was created and games placed on the website where people have to collect clues. people were giving masks to run around the fictional gotham city looking like the joker. It got so far where people were able to phone a man acting as the joker, cakes were delivered to peoples houses with moblie phones hidden inside and a number in icing on the cake, all these activities created such a hype for the film before it was even released and generated money, as with the power of the media, people became engaged and it became more than just a film.

The Blair witch project viral campaign was one of the first of its kind, before its release in america in 1999, Posters and news stories were printed showing that three college students had gone missing, thus making people believe that in fact all of this was real and not fictional, people believed that the footage and the events happening on screen were real, and the three students had died and were in fact actors. This film with a budget of $20,000 to $25,000, generated over $200,000,000 world wide. Even when it was discovered that the film was a hoax people still wanted to see it because of its already very popular status. Cloverfield is one of the most modern viral campaigns and one of the biggest, the website was very successful with people signing up to try and discover what in fact caused all the destruction in the film, it was kept a mystery, it made people eager to see it, if people knew what the film was about before viewing it, it would not have generated as much money, the mystery sold the film, this is a prime example of what a viral campaign does and how they can be successful. Other examples include paranormal activity, district 9, super 8.