Viral Adverts Research

Viral advertising helps to create buzz about films and is particularly important for low budget independent films. Viral advertising is a technique using social networks or email and other technologies to spread information about the film. It can take on many forms, such as videos, images, flash games, brandable software, or even text messages. It is the idea that if you send the advert to 5 people and they each send it to 5 people, and if the cycle continues, the number of people who see it can be endless.
Here are a few examples of various viral adverts:

The Blair Witch Project
The Blair Witch Project used viral advertising across the Internet by publishing photographs which appeared to be from a real police report about 3 missing students, as the film is a mockumentary about students filming in the woods and going missing, leaving their footage. This type of advertising could be seen as controversial as it uses a serious matter to advertise a film.

Fight Club

Fight Club had more money to spend on advertising and choose to use viral advertising in cinemas. Before a film, it appears Tyler Durten makes an announcement about fire safety, but then talk about drinking urine. It makes a statement and has an element of dark humour as the film also has themes of.

We could do something like this in the form of a video and post it on Youtube, then put the link on a social network such as Facebook.

Cloverfield

Cloverfield created a website (www.1-18-08.com), which had a pile of photos one on top of the other, each dated the release date of the film. Some are photos of missing people and some of a party. Others feature remains of what looks like a huge squid, which if you watch the film turns out to be the remains of an alien. It also plays noises of the alien after a few minutes. It makes the audience question what will happen in the film, and also the name as the word Cloverfield appears to have no relation to the photos. Also, some of the photos have faces and images blurred out, as if they are confidential.