Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Picture Production Company Creates Online Viral Marketing for the Watchmen Movie with The New Frontiersman.net

TheNewFrontiersman.net is part of the online viral marketing campaign for the upcoming Watchmen movie inspired by the right-wing extremist publication read by the main character Rorschach in the original graphic novel. It was launched in early January and I previously wrote about how the web site extends the narrative of the film through transmedia storytelling into highly populated social media sites like Twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube, Flickr and Digg. Documents, photos and videos are all aggregated on the web site uncover evidence in both the public and secret history of the Watchmen.

A number of the blogs had suggested that the Warner Brothers team behind The Dark Knight was driving the campaign, but the web site is being spearheaded by Dan Light, head of interactive at The Picture Production Company, for Paramount which is distributing the film internationally, outside the U.S. But that hasn't stopped it from getting plenty of attention from U.S. blogs and sites. Anthony Ha of Venturebeat spoke to Light who said, “I can’t think of another campaign that makes such economic use of these tools in such a cleanly integrated way.” Ha had noted that Facebook was omitted from the list of sites, which nowadays, seems like it would be the epicenter of any viral marketing campaign. However Light noted that, "Our implementation of Twitter and Friendfeed is very lean. We've kept it simple, and used the right tools for the right jobs."

The interest has been overwhelming with fans, both old and new, commenting on and engaging with the content. The PPC blog noted that the first video, an excerpt from a 1970 newsreel looking back on 10 years of Dr. Manhattan had been viewed 125,000 times within the first 24 hours and currently has 447,992 views. Flickr views and Twitter followers are growing as well and they were also excited to be featured on Epic FU. PPC Interactive had been pitching ideas for the movie five years ago were also thrilled that most of their original ideas are seeing the light of day.

Here are two more new videos from their promotional campaign.


Who Watches the Watchmen? - A Veidt Music Network (VMN) Special - 1983. Uploaded from BetaSP archive. Integrity in journalism... subscribe today! www.thenewfrontiersman.net



The Keene Act & YOU (1977) Government PSA on behalf of the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
Integrity in journalism... subscribe today!

So who watches the Watchmen? Something tells me a lot of people will be doing that in about 12 days. Stay tuned for more on the story behind Warner Bros Sponsorship of For Your Imagination's Watchmen Axis of Comedy Network and also for upcoming details on a special promotion of my own for readers of this blog.

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