Viral

Movies today need something more than just a good storyline to make it in the industry. There is such a big market for movies that they must do something in order to stand out. Some movies decide to come out with viral campaigns in order to boost awareness of their movie. In today’s age of internet and computers a viral campaign is a great way to get the masses excited about a film. The first movie to come out with an elaborate viral campaign was Cloverfield. They decided to create websites and myspace pages for the companies and the main characters of the film. They updated the websites and the myspace pages the day leading up to the movie/monster attack. This type of marketing proved extremely effective. I for one went to go see the movie mainly because of the viral campaign.

The new Spiderman movie coming out decided to use a viral campaign as well. In six cities in the U.S. they scattered backpacks at certain coordinates at certain times. A handful of people discovered these backpacks, turns out they belonged to the films antagonist Peter Parker. The backpacks contained physics texts books, photography gear, and clues to the next event in the viral campaign. The clues turned to a website which revealed new coordinates at a predestined time. People raced to the next clue. It turns out it was people dressed in a Spiderman sweatshirt instructing people to graffiti a stencil of Spiderman’s logo. (All of this graffiti was done legally.) The contestants were then sent home with a Spiderman sweatshirt and a great experience. As of right now no one knows if they will continue with the viral campaign, but with a movie that does not come out for at least six months I can guarantee you that we will see more of this campaign and more like it.

Viral campaigns are a great way to get fans excited in future films. It seems that more and more films are involving their fans with viral campaigns.