The document discusses several examples of successful viral marketing campaigns for movies. It describes how the Twilight franchise used social media like Facebook and Myspace to promote the books and films among its target young adult audience. It also details the extensive viral campaign for The Dark Knight, which included fake websites and engaged audiences in new ways, contributing to its box office success. Additionally, it discusses how The Blair Witch Project created an illusion that the film's events were real through its website, blurring fiction and reality.

1. Viral Videos

2. DefinitionThe buzzwords marketing and viral advertising refers to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes.

3. TwilightThe twilight saga has totally re-launched the idea of vampires through the success on it’s advertising. On it’s official website there is links to the official pages on various social networking sights, for example Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, Youtube and iTunes. Advertising on these sites was successful because of the popularity of the websites with young people, which is the target audience for the franchise. The success of the books and films has lead to viral campaigns gaining success like the recent comedy spoof ‘vampires suck’.

4. The Dark Knight The Dark Knight viral campaign was one of the most widespread of its kind. It included everything from websites for Gotham Cab company to a real life campaign for Harvey Dent. The point is this—the campaign engaged people on a different level. And you can’t argue with the results. The Dark Knight made ridiculous amounts of money at the box office and on DVD. Of course, there were other factors involved (Heath Ledger’s death, and just how great the film looked,) but the viral campaign succeeded in creating unprecedented amounts of hype.The Joker hijacked the web for The Dark Knight’s revolutionary viral onslaught, created by 42 Entertainment – the guys behind A.I.’s ARG ‘The Beast’ (see no. 4).Viral Links: IBelieveInHarveyDent.com, IBelieveInHarveyToo.com, WhySoSerious.com, RorysDeathKiss.com.Infectious? Knight’s inspired campaign cemented viral marketing as a legitimate way of adding ticket sales.There hasn't been anything this exhaustive and integrated since, but expect 42’s next venture to be bigger and better – just imagine what they could pull if The Riddler becomes the bad guy of Batman 3...

5. Fight ClubDirector David Fincher filmed two 'Public Service Announcements' to get people talking about Fight Club. They never made it into cinemas, so he put them online instead.Infectious? Debatable. Hardly anyone saw the PSAs at the time, while the Fight Club site looked sort of cool but was a bit of a mess. FIncher's failure made it clear that viral video strategy would need to be more direct (and to be fair, he was trying it before the age of YouTube).

6. Snakes on a Plane.In 2005, New Line Cinema wiped the dust off an old script called Venom and sent it out for a rewrite under a less cryptic moniker: Snakes On A Plane.Screenwriter Josh Friedman (War Of The Worlds) passed on the project, but talked it up on his popular blog (“It’s the Everlasting Gobstopper of movie titles!”).Viral Pieces: Friedman's enthusiasm was the touchstone that sparked a multi-headed online fanboy frenzy. Fan-made trailers, poems, foreign translations.For a (very short) while, there were whispers of a creative revolution. 'Forget small, unreliable focus groups. These Internet guys can not only promote our movie, they can help us write it, too!'Infectious? Sort of. Filmmakers’ production blogs are now an integral part of pre-release publicity. But after Snakes poisonous box office, they’re no longer asking for quite so much outside input.http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/

7. The Blair Witch ProjectBack in 1999, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez built on a successful Sundance debut by launching BlairWitch.com, perpetuating the idea that the events depicted in the film were real.Viral Pieces: Archive photos, police reports, interviews and a detailed backstory added to the illusion that the movie was cut from recently discovered footage. http://blairwitch.com/legacy.htmlInfectious? Definitely. Blair Witch showed studios and filmmakers that the web could be a powerful ally. Nothing has come close to it in terms of blurring the lines between reality and fiction, and films like 2012 and District 9 are still flogging the expanded-mythology horse today.