Film marketing 07/08 has been so much fun! I’m thinking particularly of two films; Batman “Dark Knight” and Cloverfield, although the image above, from the marketing arm (sorry!) of Death Proof is pretty cool too.

I could talk at length about J. J. Abrams‘ Cloverfield film (also known as 1-18-08 or variations thereof) but there’s never enough time in one post (this has taken 2 days to write in itself). Check out the Wikipedia entry for Cloverfield’s marketing tactics.

What I’m really excited by is the new Batman film, The Dark Knight. The campaign started fantastically with social media seeding through blogs, forums and the like. I’m sure readers will be familiar with the following images and stories mainly found on I Believe in Harvey Dent and I Believe in Harvey Dent Too. Top line is that the first site was released,  a while later, the first site looked like it had been vandalised and then the second site was launched. It was only when you got to that second page and highlighted all the black behind the error message that you started to realise what might be going on…

Getting online comic fans to engage by solving clues collaboratively in order to reveal, pixel by pixel, the above image was genius. It pushed the virality of the experience into overdrive. The more people that got involved, the greater the pay-off.

It even started to infiltrate the real world! I recently saw images of a gift pack sent to singer John Mayer on a fashion blog, Hype Beast

Did you see the playing cards thing they did in comic stores? How ’bout the cakes left in bakeries? Or how about We Are The Answer website? Why So Serious has sent fans on scavenger hunts around the US to fantastic effect, but more importantly turns out to be the tagline of the film…

Here’s a basic timeline for you:

12 April - The Dark Knight site goes live, with only the iconic Batman logo to show

5 May - Posters appear in LA promoting Harvey Dent’s electoral campaign (I Believe In Harvey Dent)

- Joker cards are scattered about comic stores with “I Believe in Harvey Dent Too” scrawled over them

- Sign up to the site and receive a message: “I always say you only really get to know a man when you peel the flesh from his face one piece at a time. Here’s you chance to help.” Each email has an X and Y coordinate - enter those coordinate on the site and reveal, one pixel at a time, the above image of The Joker (hundreds of thousands are revealed within hours, by the way, and the image is taken off the site 24 hours later… the posters in LA are defaced the next day…)

19 May - I Believe In Harvey Dent Too site is activated - you need to be a little clever to read beyond the error message! (Remove all the “H” and the “A” letters to reveal the true message behind the error message!)

26 July - Joker one dollar bills direct you to Why So Serious with a clock and co-ordinates to locations all over the country and the Alternate Reality Gaming experience takes over - phone numbers written in the sky, friend collaborations, Joker masks, and eventually the teaser trailer for The Dark Knight film. The site gets replaced by www.rent-a-clown.com with photos from those who’d found the masks.

18 October - Why So Serious gets another update - a goulish, rotting pumpkin with a Batman logo… a reference to the Batman classic comic The Long Hallowe’en.

31st October - The pumpkin has been kidnapped, replaced by a ransom note and clues to 49 US city locations… the race to find these clues is now on! 24 hours later, photos of each spot have been uploaded and the message is revealed - “The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules”

2 November - Click on the images and The Joker tells you “Tonight, you’re going to break your one rule” - this image led you to Rory’s Death Kiss site (a reference to The Dark Knight’s working title of Rory’s First Kiss) and a place to upload images of yourself dressed as The Joker.

Alternate Reality Gaming has never been so relevant.

I could go on about Dark Knight, and probably will closer to the July 25th UK release date, but whilst the fact that I’ve not actually seen any of the marketing and promotion I’ve talked about in person is true, that’s what’s interesting to me.

I mean, Cloverfield and The Dark Knight are perhaps the most hyped films of 2008! Arguably, like the promotions for Radiohead, it’s only because of the films’ pedigrees and backgrounds that allows for such marketing campaigns to exist. The first Batman, Batman Begins, was such a return to form for the franchise, and this story could well top that… Cloverfield has fantastically ridden the hype behind director J. J. Abrams’ metaphysical, labyrinthine plots and story leaks that have made Lost such a success.

Fantastic examples of using social media in its fullest, getting user interaction to draw further interest and hype, getting people to go out in the real world, to collaborate and to discover what they can about a film. I’d even go so far as to predict box office opening weekend records being broken for a sequel (possibly to caveat that with “a comic book sequel” or something)!

They’ve understood their fans, how their fans then talk to each other, and how great ideas and experiences are driving the conversation at the heart of modern marketing communications.

A beautiful example of Giveashitability.

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