Research into viral advertisements

In the modern age, a common way of marketing a film is to create viral advertisements to appeal to the target audience, and because so many people nowadays have access to the internet it is very easy and cheap to market on the internet and reach a lot of people.

One of the most common ways to market any media, be it TV shows, films or games, is to put posters and trailers on websites such as youtube. Because so many people use these websites, lots of people are bound to see it and so it gets word out. However adverts on youtube can be skipped after a few seconds so it is important to make it catchy quickly.

Adverts on youtube are often marketing big films as they are more likely to catch the watchers eye, so this form of advert may not be appropriate for our film as it is low budget and would likely be skipped by lots of people and so the campaign wouldn't be very effective.





Viral adverts can also be more subtle and less easy to find. The last exorcism used a short 5 second footage on chatroulette. The people on chat roulette did not know what was happening as the girl on the footage turned into a demonic figure and lunged at the camera.

This was effective because it genuinely scared a lot of the people who were watching, which implies to the audience that the same feeling will be replicated in the cinema. Also for other people watching this video, it is quite inventive, suggesting that the film is creative and unpredictable, unlike most modern horror films.

Toy story also used a viral advert like this, making a fake commercial for a toy in the film 'lots o huggin bear'. It was made to look like it was made in the 1980's and pulls this look off really well.


The dark knight had a very extensive and successful viral advertising campaign. One method it used was a website called whysoserious.com, which got a huge batman fanbase on a worldwide scavenger hunt. This campaign worked because batman has a very large pre-existing fanbase.

It also featured a rent-a-clown website and defaced newspapers.
























The muppets also used a lot of viral advertisements, parodying a lot of other recent films to show how the film can be made to be different genres. This expands their audience because they are pulling fans in from the film franchises they have parodied by being clever and impressing people watching the parodies. We could use an idea like this by creating a second edit and making it a different genre.



Paranormal activity also used viral advertising and is probably the most relevant to our film because paranormal activity first started out as a very low budget film with an unknown director and unknown actors. they used eventful.com as a form of crowd sourcing, where people could demand the film play in their city. Also, videos of spooky ghost-like activity popped up on youtube, especially for the second and third films.