CloverfieldA good example of a promotional package would be the marketing campaign of films such as Cloverfield, where the effectiveness of its campaign gave it the success it got.
The viral marketing campaign that Cloverfield implemented started off with a teaser trailer before a showing of transformers in the summer 2007. This teaser trailer only included video footage from the film and did not include key things such as the actors, director and didn’t even include the title card of the film. The trailer included the familiar sites of Manhattan with the unfamiliar dark look it and the iconic head of the statue of liberty crashing through the streets of Manhattan. The only information the teaser trailer leaked was the release date, January 18th 2008. with this information The film inevitably led to a lot of hype to the film, making people {teenagers especially) go online and extend the hype by asking questions and setting up forums to discuss what this nameless film was, hoping that someone would know. Furthermore, the unfamiliar portrayal of Manhattan, a world known place added interest to the world and the followers of the film became a cult, starting small and turning into something very big.
The makers of the film Paramount kept it very secretive and only leaked prompts and teasers when they felt like it. On January 7th 2007, the director of the film JJ Abrams confirmed that there was only official site for the film and was labelled ‘1-18-08.com’. With the website’s address the release date of the film it just led to even more digging by users to try and get what this film was about. On this website you could find a series of photos that were dated, leading intrigue and the Cloverfield world was getting bigger by the day. In addition to this, if the web page was left open long enough you could hear a roar from the monster.
When November 2007 came, a second trailer was shown before the screening of Beowulf. This trailer confirmed the title of the film ‘Cloverfield’. With this title finally uncovered, the fans that followed plus more began to dig again, since it was such a long time between the releases of material. With this, Cloverfield.com replaced the previous website and more content was revealed such as the trailer. The number 33287 was displayed on the website which allowed people to text the number and receives a monster roar ring tome and a wallpaper of decimated Manhattan. The number was also a promotional technique for the country as everybody got material from Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. In addition to this, the Fictional characters of the film had their own Myspace page to promote the film further, using all aspects the new generation online users.
Along with this, Cloverfield also incorporated Slusho! ( a Japanese drink company) as a part of its campaign, which also extended its fan base as it gave away free t-shirts at the comic con presentation of Cloverfield and users that registered with the Slusho! Website received emails close to the release with fictional sonar images of a deep sea creature heading for Manhattan.
Cloverfield had a budget of $25,000,000 and if it wasn’t for its very successful marketing campaign it wouldn’t have made its gross revenue of over $170,000,000, more than 6 times its budget, deeming it very successful.
Researching, Cloverfield has given me ideas for my coursework for working around a viral marketing campaign and including other things that will lead the target audience to become excited by my idea. In order to do this i have to come up with a viral campaign plan and a timeline of deadlines for the things I want to create, it should start off as ambiguous and symbolic and gradually become more obvious.
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