The Bent Bullet – Another Exciting Film Microsite

X-Men: Days of Future Past has created another viral microsite for the upcoming film. This site details the story of how Magneto was arrested and found guilty for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to the information on this site, authorities believed that Magneto used his mutant ability (he is able to alter magnetic fields) to change the trajectory of Lee Harvey Oswald’s bullet, asserting this so-called “Bent Bullet Theory”. The site itself is interactive and allows you to scroll through a series of panels that chronicles the events that took place. The site uses grainy, full-framed, and sometimes moving images to tell the story. The creators did a great job at giving this site an old-yet-sleek, 1970s-feel and did an even better job at getting X-Men fans (like myself) even excited to see the film – if that is even possible. My favorite part is the tour of Magneto’s prison cell, built courtesy of the great people over at Trask Industries. The narrated informational tour explains in detail how Trask Industries was able to design a cell that is capable of containing a man who can manipulate metal.

Something worth noting here is that I discovered the site after seeing a tweet with a link to an article about it. The website and corresponding  YouTube video (below) have already garnered a good amount of online media coverage and will certainly help generate significant social media buzz for the film and its (very slowly…) approaching release date (which is May 22, 2014 – in case you don’t already have it in your calendar).

Check out my screen grabs and the YouTube video that goes along with the site and, of course, the website itself. While you are doing that, imagine how much fun the people behind this site had while making it.

Front Page

Tour of Prison Cell

Microsites and Viral Marketing for Films

This is the kind of stuff I want to do for a living.

There are many things I would love to be a part of at some point in my career in the realm of television, film and entertainment in general. One of the things at the top of that list is to create online content for films that further immerses viewers into the fictional world, deeper than the film itself. (Think this dream job is too far out of my league? Yeah, I don’t care.)

The Daily Bugle The Amazing Spider-Man

This example for the Daily Bugle, the newspaper that employs Peter Parker/Spider-man, is a rather simple approach, but still awesome. All the writing must be done in-character while also aligning with the theme/tone of the film. What I think I love most about this, from a marketing standpoint, is how it never directly promotes the film out-right (as it would be breaking character), and yet still manages to build excitement through rich content.

Oscorp Industries The Amazing Spider-Man

(The site has been removed.)

Another great example of an off-screen, interactive fan experience are websites that serve as a ‘real’ version of fictional entities pulled from films. Prior to the release of The Amazing Spider-Man, a microsite was created for the fictional Oscorp Industries. Any web-slinger fan would recognize the company name and, upon visiting the site, would find it to be both content-rich (concise copy, images, videos and even mini-games) and very well-aligned to the representation of Oscorp through the comic books and other media. Additionally, taking in the content provided on the site gave fans clues to the plot of the film, which helped to build anticipation without spoiling the story. This microsite was a part of a comprehensive viral marketing campaign

Trask Industries  X-Men: Days Of Futures Past

My final example of this is the website for the upcoming film X-Men: Days Of Futures Past. (Sensing the superhero theme yet?) Any Marvel fan can tell you that Trask Industries plays a major role in the world of X-Men and the super-microsite launched to generate buzz for the film is Trask Industries company page. The interface is very interactive and the information is presented in a manner which one would find on any corporate website. The very creation of this microsite gave fans a hint of the plot of the film well before any information had been release. The site itself allows users to share links onto their own social media feeds, leveraging user-level advocacy to build awareness for the film. This site sparked interest, from inciting peer-to-peer level discussion to garnered media coverage from prominent online entertainment blogs and publications.

Update:

As I mentioned above, the use of microsites is excellent for attracting media attention. The latest post from the Daily Bugle viral Tumblr page was published yesterday from the point-of-view of J. Jonah Jameson, the fictional publication’s editor-in-chief. Today, I came across an article from ScreenRant discussing the post (they actually embedded the entire post into their article) and speculating whether or not this meant the eccentric character would be making an appearance in the sequel. This was, of course, one of the desired results of the viral site.

Jay Z & JT’s “Holy Grail” and Using Facebook To Promote New Music

Justin Timberlake and Jay Z singing “Suit & Tie” at the 2013 Grammy Awards.

On August 29, Jay Z posted the music video to his and Justin Timberlake’s new song “Holy Grail” exclusively on his Facebook fan page. According a report by Mashable, the video was only available on Jay Z’s page for the first 24 hours of its release, something never attempted before in the music realm. I think this was a great move for a number of reasons:

1. Delivering  new music to your fans (in this sense, I’m referring to people who “Like” your page”) on social media allows you to gain valuable feedback in real-time. This can be helpful as a way to ‘test the waters’ and get a feel for how the public will respond before releasing it to the rest of the online community.
2. In this case, the use of a unique exclusive release was a great way to generate media buzz for the music video.
3. Forcing fans to visit Jay Zs page in order to access the new video likely led to more page “Likes” and, therefore, more users he can reach with future releases.
4. Facebook (like most social media platforms) allows the users to easily “like” and share the video, both of which will push the video onto the News Feeds of “friends-of-fans” and boost its overall reach and viewership.
5. Posting the video exclusively to Jay Z’s page ensures that users who are already fans of his work will be the first to experience it. This can be useful in creating an incentive for non-fans to follow his online presence while also giving current fans satisfaction in being some of the first to have access to the video. Releasing “fan-only” content can generate a sense of appreciation among fans, which can be used to improve Jay Z’s online presence and his strengthen his relationship with his fans.

Click here for the Facebook Post on Jay Z’s fan page and check out the Mashable article.