ARG and online film marketing

No blockbuster these days is complete without a complex web trail laid down by the marketing wonks. Ben Walters goes online in search of answers

What do the homepage of a Japanese soft drink company, YouTube footage of a collapsing oil rig and the MySpace profiles of half a dozen young New Yorkers have in common? How about the contact details for a Los Angeles bakery and a tribute site dedicated to a teenage murder victim? They are in fact elements of complex marketing campaigns for two of this year’s most hyped movies. The first cluster relates to ‘Cloverfield’, the monster movie that scared up $50 million on its US release earlier this month; the second group is connected to ‘The Dark Knight’, Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming sequel to ‘Batman Begins’.

Enter the alternate reality game, or ARG. An ARG is a nexus of interlinked sources – mostly websites, along with voicemails, scavenger hunts and even novels – which shed light on a hidden story. ARGs challenge players to make connections and solve puzzles to piece together a ‘distributed narrative’.

The first ARG was launched in 2001, in conjunction with Steven Spielberg’s ‘Artificial Intelligence: AI’. Since then, they have been used to market video games, albums, cars and computer operating systems, and have proved efficient for cultivating active, imaginative engagement with a cultural product – especially among young men.

‘Cloverfield’, for instance, was launched with an arresting trailer that didn’t mention the title, but enterprising fans used its advertised release date to track down a website, (www.1-18-08.com), featuring images from the film and leading on to interlinked MySpace pages for certain characters. A T-shirt glimpsed in the trailer led to www.slusho.jp , a fictional soft drink’s homepage; information followed about its parent company, deep-sea exploration, and a monster headed for Manhattan.

The campaign for ‘The Dark Knight’ used websites for Gotham City institutions such as the police department and public transport to progress organically from the events of ‘Batman Begins’. Meanwhile, the sequel’s villain, the Joker, has been laying trails for fans to piece together, sending them on real-world missions that qualify them as ‘gang members’.

‘Think of the player as a crime scene investigator,’ suggests Susan Bonds, chief production officer of 42 Entertainment. Founded by veterans of the ‘AI’ project, the Los Angeles-based company has pioneered what it calls ‘immersive entertainment’, working on ARGs for ‘Halo 2’, Nine Inch Nails and Microsoft. It is also reportedly orchestrating the ‘Dark Knight’ campaign, although declines to confirm involvement in ongoing projects. (That, after all, would break the illusion.)

For Bonds, the ARG is a new twist on a marketing staple. She compares the method to, say, long-running instant-coffee campaigns in which, ‘over the course of several years you’re seeing this couple get together. The idea that you can create a compelling narrative around a product is nothing new.’

In theory, the approach should equip players with a deeper contextual understanding of the movie’s world than the average viewer. It is not, however, perfect. The main action of ‘Cloverfield’ turns out to have only a glancing relationship with the contents of the ARG, and even contradicts it in certain respects. Some players have been considerably miffed at this, raising the possibility that a mismanaged campaign could alienate fans from a franchise as easily as attract them to it.

There’s room for improvement, then, but the ARG is still young. It looks like it’s here to stay, though. ‘There’s strong evidence that it works,’ insists Bonds. ‘I’m averaging two million [users] involved for half an hour a week. That’s huge.’ So, she suggests, ‘marketing-driven experiences are going to be where the activity is’.

In theory, though, there’s no reason ARGs shouldn’t develop as a stand-alone artistic form. ‘We all have a computer and a phone that can text and take pictures,’ Bonds notes. ‘It’s going to happen. It can’t be stopped.’

For now, though, we shouldn’t be too surprised to learn what the lead character of ‘Cloverfield’ does for a living. He’s in marketing.

‘Cloverfield’ opens at the Empire Leicester Square on Feb 1.