Cloverfield

Welcome to the first post for Untitled! From here on out, we'll be taking a look at marketing for and in movies. I'll try to tackle a variety of topics, basically anything that is of interest at that moment in time.

A little background on myself before getting started. I'm a senior Integrated Marketing Communications major at Ithaca College. I'll be graduating in May to embark on a career in advertising and marketing. I spent my first two years at Ithaca as a film production major, so the film industry is a major interest of mine. It'll be interesting to analyze the industry from the marketing and advertising angle rather then from the production side.

To start the blog off, I'll be taking a look at the marketing effort for Cloverfield the new monster film from producer J.J. Abrams (Lost, Alias) and director Matt Reeves (Felicity). Prior to its national release last Friday (1/18/08 - used as the film's working title when the initial trailer was released), Cloverfield had managed to generate significant buzz , primarily through a viral and online campaign that began with the film's first trailer, which premiered before the summer blockbuster, Transformers. At the time, the film was not using it's official title, instead opting for the working title, 1/18/08.

Abrams is no stranger to viral marketing campaigns. For evidence of his past work, just watch the first few seasons of Lost, and google the Dharma Initiative. The campaign for Cloverfield is very similar to that of Lost. The marketing team creates a series of fake websites and side stories that both enhance and drum up interest in the final film. According to this article in the Boston Globe, the campaign involved "unofficial - yet Paramount-owned - websites, including character MySpace profiles and home pages for the fictional Japanese companies Slusho, a soft-drink manufacturer, and Tagruato, a deep-sea drilling outfit." The side stories of Slusho and Tagruato helped to shed some light on the origins of the monster in the final film. Ultimately, seeing as how the film finished in the #1 spot its opening weekend, the campaign was a successful one.

That said, I do not think that a viral campaign like the one used in Cloverfield would work for every type of film. It worked so well for Cloverfield because the film had mystery and suspense embedded in its story line, piquing people's natural curiosity. This tactic would not necessarily work in something like a romantic comedy where the plot tends to be more straight forward.

For more information, check out a complete history of the Cloverfield campaign over at Movie Marketing Madness. Also check out this follow up article, also from Movie Marketing Madness