Viral Marketing Research

To further develop my researching process into the production of my five minute film, we studied the use of viral marketing in coercion with the success of popular mystery films. Famous titles, addressed above in the presentation such as "The Blair Witch Project" and "Cloverfield" all became famous from the production and incorporation of viral marketing.
It can be defined as follows:

"Viral marketing and viral advertising, (buzzwords), refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes"

This means that, through social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, or even interactive film websites set up and heavily detailled, producers and marketers are able to reach massive audiences whilst still in the early stages of film production. Mysterys are developed and created, little revelation of details about the film itsself are given, and slowly but surely, fan sites and members build as the clues are tried to be pieced together, to attempt to make some sort of sense out of the enigma. It is a highly successful, yet cheap method of marketing, and many examples of this have been seen ever since the birth of the internet.

The earliest account was, "The Blair Witch Project", created in 1999 by Robin Cowie and
Gregg Hale. Previously mentioned as one of the leading successors in cheap production huge profit, it heavily exploited the capabilities of the internets mass audience, and the possibilities of incorporating many different aspects of multimedia into the marketing of the film. Because it could be created so cheaply, and due to the ease and extreme success of the viral marketing campaign, the creators made a very large profit.

Another aspect of its extreme success was its incorporation of "Hyper-realism". They created a background to their horrific tale, even adding a section for mythology that details the events leading up to the students doomed journey. They even went as far, in terms of making it as believable as possible, to produce a section focused on "The Aftermath", explaining and documenting the evidence that show the students were in fact killed during that horrific night. 
Photographs of their ruined bags and clothes are shown, marked as "Evidence", and films from those individuals who supposedly found the evidence, under a 100 year old bunker cabin, explaining that there was no possible way it could have got there.

Another film that has been possibly the most successful viral marketing campaign of all time was that of the "The Dark Knight", the most recent batman film. It began months before its premiere, and we as the mass internet audience, were introduced into the world of The Joker, as he created a list on website " http://www.whysoserious.com/ " of to do things that would wreak havoc around the globe. The response was enormous.


The video below outlines the extent of the influence and effect over the people of the world, solely from this viral marketing campaign.

The impact this particular viral campaign had was so substantial, an almost alternate life was created, in which people were able to feel part, or a 'citizen', of a fictional Gotham City.