It was almost ten years ago that “The Blair Witch Project” purportedly first harnessed the power of online viral marketing to elevate what was a low-budget indie film into a $248 blockbuster. Back in those Web 1.0 days the word-of-mouth propagators were Blair Witch fan sites, Web boards, mailing lists, newsgroups and trailer sites. In 2008, “Cloverfield” went deeper into the Web 2.0 social media marketing zeitgeist, alerting budgeted marketers to the even greater potential of online, viral and WOMM (word-of-mouth marketing) as they bore witness to the power of shared content.
Today it’s not negotiated without a multi-layered marketing strategy, or better yet – controversy or the ‘shock’ factor. Word-of-mouth initially catalysed about Cloverfield through a faux site with a domain name that utilized the inner-city fear manufacture quality of a simple date: 1-18-08.com. The site was aptly burgeoning with destructive photography of New York contrasted with an individual’s party images, all of which you could interactively ‘scramble’ or ‘rubble’ through with your cursor.
In isolation, these party photos and horror images would give the impression of a mere ambiguous entity for a film promo site, but when layered with a faux social networking profile for the owner (Myspace.com/robbyhawkins) and given the propensity to be a shared content phenomenon by virtue of a 5 minute ‘shocking’ YouTube viral that featured a headless Statue of Liberty – the results would prove just as devastating as the imagery. To date there are seven YouTube videos dedicated to the film surpassing a million views each. Paramount relied on hidden viral clues, buried websites, impassioned bloggers and a little widgetry to eek out online word-of-mouth that teased and enticed audiences.
Warner Bros reportedly used an equally innovative strategy to generate public interest in its July release, the new Batman film, ‘The Dark Knight’. Six minutes of the film were ‘accidentally’ leaked in a screening in Imax cinemas in December 2007. The footage was quickly uploaded on to YouTube where it received thousands of hits. The campaign also used faux-vandalized websites, a real-life scavenger hunt, and user-submitted photos. But be warned – as Utalkmarketing note – considerable hype or online gimmickry doesn’t entirely polish a mediocre product and cease the IMDB rating PR machine. Utalk jest: “just ask the producers of Snakes on a Plane.”
If a poor product could be strategically resuscitated online or given its best chance of success then Paramount has now made it a far bigger business. They have created the perfect template for ‘Film 2.0′ with one of their newest releases: ‘Tropic Thunder’. So far, helpfully, they also have sentiment on their side with an IMDB rating of 7.9/10.
Tropic Thunder is an action comedy starring Ben Stiller, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. as a set of prima donna actors making a Vietnam War film – with a ton of Apocalypse Now references. They are left in the lurch when their displeased writer and director decide to forsake them in the middle of the jungle, forcing them to fight their way out.
TT paints an even more multi-stranded online narrative than the mockumentary films ‘The Blair Witch Project’ and ‘Cloverfield’. Multi-layering is at its heart – affecting its concept, plot, characters and marketing. Cunningly there’s a whole host of back-stories for each of the main characters, including actors’ micro-sites and fictitious film trailers. Each of these layers are then given depth online using a mix of video, interactive and micro-site content, creating a whole web of cris-crossing layers that the fan can get absorbed in and share – helping extend the film’s overall experience, as well as providing powerful viral marketing fuel.
One online promo blog even introduces the notion of a new type of mockumentary that has its own faux trailer, but remember this mockumentary is a ‘making of’ a film within a film.
Still with me? This is just one of the online self-referential layered tactics they employ. Here’s the list:
Layer tactic 1: Tropic Thunder’s faux trailers and character Websites
Faux trailers of a character’s past films as an actor have been created and distributed on their own personal websites. Paramount spawned an official site for star Tugg Speedman (Ben Stiller’s character) as well as sites for some of his films like ‘Simple Jack’ (an action star going for an Oscar by playing a handicapped farmhand) and ‘Scorcher VI’ (an asinine action flick). Tugg’s favourite charity even has its own site, which for comedic reasons has the homepage load up a photoshopped picture of a Panda on Tugg’s lap.
There is also a site for Kirk Lazurus, the actor played by Robert Downey Jr., as well as his previous faux film ‘Satan’s Alley’ (with Tobey Maguire cameoing as himself). The film trailer frames both stars as two gay medieval priests in a parody of ‘Brokeback Mountain’. There’s also a site for the fictional company that turned Lazarus into a coloured man in Tropic Thunder. Jeff Portnoy’s (Jack Black) film, ‘The Fatties: Fart 2’, spoofed Eddie Murphy’s depiction of multiple characters such as in ‘Nutty Professor II: The Klumps’. Each trailer by their nature is geared to be embeddable viral phenomena due to their intertextuality provoking conversation.
They even concocted a site that sports classic 90’s GIF files for Cody Keith Underwood, the stunt coordinator played by Danny R. McBride in the movie.
Layer tactic 2: The ‘Rain of Madness’ mockumentary and blog
A faux trailer for the mockumentary ‘Rain of Madness’ has been released as a parody of ‘Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse’. The faux documentary includes a movie poster and an official website preceding Tropic Thunder’s release.
As Tropic Thunder is a comedic remake of ‘Apocalypse Now’ it’s only apt that it has a subsequent documentary on the making of the movie within a movie. Rain of Madness is the film of German filmmaker ‘Jan Jurgen’ that exposes how calamitous the shooting of the movie was. The site for the movie is a WordPress-powered blog that features the oddments of the documentary along with commentary from Jurgen about how moronic the people he’s working with are.
Layer tactic 3: Star actors go viral
One of the greatest facets of the viral campaign is a star-studded attempt at the creation of a viral. It originally aired during the MTV Movie Awards and can now of course be found on YouTube generating millions of views. The video showed the three lead actors on a laborious mission to create a viral video for the Internet that could promote the movie. As the trio bounce ideas about, Downey’s role in Iron Man and the Orange ads are played on intertextually. Cleverly it was also filmed with a mobile phone camera to give it an authentic look.
Layer tactic 4: ‘Booty Sweat’ energy drink
Paramount has bizarrely reversed the conventional product-placement route by distributing a product that’s featured in the movie called “Booty Sweat!” – an energy drink. The studio believes the movie’s target demographic of young men is synonymous with the audience that will consume energy drinks and it works well since there’s already a degree of peculiarity with the film being a film-within-a-film.
Booty Sweat is sold on Amazon and its spearhead is a character in the film called Alpa Chino. He has his own site and MySpace page complete with product availability, a background bio and more, but that’s not it – on Alpa Chino’s site you can even insert your own mug-shot into a Booty Sweat promotional video and share the results.
Layer tactic 5: Social networking, widgetry placement & engagement advertising
The Facebook and MySpace fan pages for the movie contain the movie’s poster, widget, linkages to the various character sites and some of their MySpace pages, photos, the trailer and other videos. There’s also a game you can play that has a number of features, from a run-and-shoot game to a build a soldier feature.
A widget does appear to be a necessity these days. The TT widget (available on the site, Myspace page etc) contains access to the Downloads, a Gallery, Video, information on The Film and the ability to Get Tickets.
Paramount also utilized a new ‘engagement’ ad unit on Facebook to promote the movie. The new banner ads, which included a quote from Rolling Stone critic Pete Travers, impelled visitors to click and launch a video clip contain which they could then comment on.
With all this layering and inbuilt “talkable content”, Tropic Thunder’s a really great example of how film-making and marketing can be integrated together to ultimately create a self-marketing “social” film. Welcome film 2.0.
