Why so serious?
The five Batman movies released between 1989 and 2008 grossed more than $1.6 billion worldwide. It would be understandable, then, if the producers decided to skimp on the marketing budget for film number six. If ever a movie could be expected to market itself, it would be The Dark Knight.
Instead, the producers teamed with 42 Entertainment, a California-based creator of alternate reality games, to immerse fans in one of the most elaborate viral marketing campaigns ever conceived. The fin began over a year before the movie opened, with the appearance of posters and a website "supporting" one of the film's characters, Harvey Dent, in his campaign to become distract attorney of Gotham City. Visitors to the website quickly discovered a link to a similar site-www.whysoserious.com-that appeared to have been vandalized by the movie's main villain, the Joker.
The emergence if the Joker set in motion a series of games in which fans vied with one another to solve puzzles. The fastest fans received cellphones that let them access information that led them deeper into the puzzle. Meanwhile the websites multiplied: fake newspapers with articles like "Batman Stops Mob Melee"; safety tips from the Gotham Police Department; even a link to Betty's House pf Pies, a restaurant that plays a small but crucial roles in the movie's plot.
The appeal of viral marketing, according to Jonathan Waite, owner of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network is that "you're not a passive onlooker; you're taking an active role. And anytime you take an active role, you're emotionally connection," Or, as one blogger put it, "I've never been a fan of the Batman serious, but this sort of thing makes me want to go see it."
The Dark Knight's innovative marketing campaign helped catapult the movie to a record-breaking box office debut, earning over %158 million in its opening weekend.
Domestically and internationally, the film was a great success, earning more than $873 million worldwide. That was more than half the money earned by the pervious five Batman movies combined. Was it the innovative marketing tactics or the captivating line-up of stars that contributed to the film success? We may never know.
While it was not the first movie that has employed the use of viral marketing, The Dark Knight's success with the tactic could arguably be seen as the launching point that has made it more commonplace, with studios continuously looking for new and unique ways ti create consumer-generated "buzz" about their forthcoming movies. Super 8, released in 2011, made great use of viral marketing.
Teaser trailers and other charter-related material were slowly an steadily released for nearly a full year, through sources such as Twitter accounts and letter, before the movie hit theaters.
Inception, release in 2010 and directed by Christopher Nolan, also director of The Dark Knight, launched a viral marketing campaign that included an online game called "Mind Crime." With the sequel to The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises, hitting theatres in the summer of 2012, viral marketing was aging at the forefront of the movie's promotion efforts.
Approximately six months before the movie's scheduled release, a "CIA Memo" presumably linked to a charter was leaked online and was later followed by a website titles "Operation Early Bird," where a countdown to the release of an extended prologue was held. Viral marketing of movies has taken on a life of its own and there is now an online culture of people who enjoy and critique the campaigns as if they were movies themselves.
Question:
What factors accrued in the external environment that allowed for the increase in use and success of viral marketing campaigns? Do any of these factors also pose related threats?
How do decisions made by marketing managers about the marketing mix of the product (a movie like The Dark Knight) affect the implementation of a viral marketing campaign?