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Posts Tagged “

Viral

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Faceless Droids Stalk The Wealthy

Faceless droids have been popping up all over the UK. They've been chauffeured into Elton John's White Ball, spotted at the Harrod's sale and are enjoying a tennis match at Wimbledon. The latest addition to the scifi robot and alien advertising craze has begun to spill over into real life, thanks to the wonders of viral marketing. But this ad for a over-priced sports car, the Lotus, takes the alien cake on over-the-top ads. Apparently you're a faceless droid until you drop a few hundred thousand pounds to "buy" a personality in the form of a Lotus. Click through for more pictures of the faceless creatures including super creepy video of a faceless man in the crowd at the Harrod's sale. More »

12:20 PM on Wed Jul 2 2008
By Meredith Woerner
11,413 views, 47 comments

Latest by n/a: As someone on a different site said, while doubtful, Number 6 (The Prisoner) drove a Lotus. And they are doing a remake. Not that I see it being that clever, but I can hope. more »

dark knight

Bruce Wayne's Backstory, Dateline-Style

Gotham Cable News brings us the full tabloid report on playboy Bruce Wayne. Taking a note from flashy entertainment news shows, this detailed report on the scion of the Wayne family catches us all the way up to the new penthouse digs of the billionaire. They piece is titled Billionaire Without A Cause: Bruce Wayne and the best part is when they speculate where Bruce vanished to after the death of his parents' murderer — one rumor involves owning and operating a Brazilian modeling agency. This is obviously the latest piece of viral marketing for July's The Dark Knight, but by far the most interesting. [Gotham Cable News]

8:40 AM on Tue Jun 24 2008
By Meredith Woerner
40,578 views, 14 comments

Latest by n/a: golffarb, you might want to take a look at the 'episode' from last week. The site has used a lot more than just pictures from Begins. more »

lost

Your Chance To Join The Dharma Initiative

Did you catch the viral marketing commercial during last night's Lost season finale? It looks like Octagon Global (which is connected to the mysterious Dharma Initiative) is looking for a few good Roger Workmen get slaughtered and tossed in mass graves. And it looks like you'll have your chance to join up at Comic-Con. Full list of awesome job openings after the jump. More »

10:40 AM on Fri May 30 2008
By Meredith Woerner
4,203 views, 21 comments

cloverfield

First Images From Cloverfield 2?

Some new viral marketing for the long-awaited (since January, anyway) Cloverfield 2 has trickled out — unless it's just a red herring. A viral site released these underwater monster photos. Look closely and you can see crooked-legged monster/aliens running about on (what appears to be) the sea floor. The pictures accompanied a government-esque blacked out document detailing a frantic transmission between Ngog Atsumi and Sub-4767. View all three black and white pictures and transmission document after the jump. More »

10:40 AM on Mon May 5 2008
By Meredith Woerner
11,739 views, 33 comments

Latest by DSTRYA: @Garrison Dean, King Awesome: LOL. Cloverfield is a real learning experience for children: 'hey, little guy-- let's watch this movie so that if there's ever an emergency at, you know, a city-wide level, you'll understand right away that there's no more »

ufo viral marketing

CGI Artist Did Not Create UFO Pics -- Who Did?

On Friday, I posted about a series of mysterious UFO pictures that have been circulating on the internet, suggesting they were part of a viral marketing campaign. Many commenters said the UFOs were the work of one Kris Avery, a 3D graphic artist who made a music video for Drone filled with images of the spiny ships. So I wrote to Avery to get to the bottom of the mystery, but his response only made the images more mysterious. Apparently, he did do the music video but he did not create the pictures of the UFOs. He based his video on images he'd seen online in UFO enthusiast forums. He actually made the video to prove to "believers" that the original images could have been faked with CGI. And now he's been accused of creating them as a viral marketing campaign. Here's his weird story. More »

2:20 PM on Tue Apr 1 2008
By Annalee Newitz
9,321 views, 33 comments

Latest by Emperor: I looked at this in October last year: [www.wunderkabinett.co.uk] It was interesting to see that people were suspicious but Kris dropped a note in and I'm happy to believe he isn't responsible. I've seen a few of these pass before and if more »

viral marketing

Mysterious New UFO Pics Probably from X-Files

A set of photographs depicting a beautiful, steampunk-looking UFO hovering over a small Northern California town are most likely from an X-Files viral marketing campaign. These images have zoomed across the web at lightspeed. Some of the first shots that made it onto the net last year showed this ship, pictured, which looks like something out of The Golden Compass. Just recently an anonymous person claiming to be with a "secret project" related to extraterrestrials released schematics of the ship online. Sounds like an X-Files stealth campaign or ARG (alternate reality game). Still, the schematics (below) look really freaking cool. More »

6:00 PM on Fri Mar 28 2008
By Annalee Newitz
12,882 views, 67 comments

Latest by DK-SmAsH: i like how the "alien plans" are printed on paper...wouldnt they use some sort of high tech program to view it? more »

advertising

Stealth Marketing Campaign for "Shutter" Promotes Bullshit Science

Shutter, a horror flick opening next week, is a purely supernatural tale about spirit photography (taking pictures of ghosts). But it turns out the Shutter viral marketing crew is trying to suck in the sciencey/gadget geek crowd with a stealth media campaign: Fox reps are urging journalists to write about the "scientific causes" of ghosts, and push expensive spirit-photography cameras on people interested in the movie. An anonymous source passed me a fairly creepy email about this that was sent to a large, glossy magazine's editorial staff. More »

10:20 AM on Thu Mar 13 2008
By Annalee Newitz
2,289 views, 43 comments

Latest by Skeptic: "This might make a very powerful tool for understanding this phenomenon and the possible scientific causes" Ah, a classic case of presuming ones premises. Before we can examine the scientific reasons behind a phenomena one must first establish that it exists more »

advertising

Mind Control Is Just a Click Away

The goal of most advertisers is, frankly, to bypass your rational brain and reach down into the murky depths of your limbic system to control your desires. And the Web has given advertisers powerful new mind-control tools, allowing them to generate fake "buzz" for products by implanting references to, say, Hewlett Packard on YouTube or Cisco on Wikipedia. The idea is to make people think that their "friends" online like a product and artificially jumpstart a word-of-mouth recommendation for the product. At a South by Southwest panel Friday about the worst viral media advertising, several marketers and critics gathered to discuss the most heinous and failed examples of ads that are turning our mediascape into a William Gibson or Philip K. Dick nightmare. Two ad campaigns stood out as the worst. More »

11:40 AM on Mon Mar 10 2008
By Annalee Newitz
2,053 views, 12 comments

Latest by mrs_helm: I haven't worked for any of the really nasty companies, but I have worked for or otherwise experienced enough to know that the advertisers and the people actually knowledgable about the product rarely meet. Don't blame the marketing people for more »

wild cards

American Hero Lets Readers Inside Wild Cards

When is a TV reality show not a TV reality show? When it's a multi-author blog in support for the latest in the Wild Cards series of anthologies. American Hero, the TV show at the center of Inside Straight, the eighteenth book in the series released last month, has made the leap off the printed page to become a site allowing readers to follow - and maybe interact with - the fictional characters competing to become America's next superhero sensation. More »

8:20 AM on Mon Feb 4 2008
By grae
1,479 views, 16 comments

Latest by cde: @ceejeemcbeegee: Does lost involve people getting superpowers/disfiguring-mutations/dead-as-a-door-knob from a alien introduced disease? more »

social control

Beware Google's Surveillance Death-Ray

What happens when Google street view is no longer content with showing incredibly detailed pictures of the outside of your house? This hilarious science fiction video by the Vacationeers follows Google's omni-cam to its most invasive extreme... and of course they posted it on YouTube. More »

6:20 AM on Mon Jan 28 2008
By charliejane
5,355 views, 6 comments

star trek

Learn The Secret Codes For Trek's Hot Webcams

Ever since the Star Trek movie site has gone live, fans have been noticing a tiny link to yet another J.J. Abrams viral marketing site: NCC-1701.com. It offers viewers already... uh... wowed by last week's teaser trailer for JJ Abrams' Star Trek remake the chance to watch simulated webcam views of the construction of the Enterprise. But you have to know the right settings for those finicky Trek-cams. Click through for details. More »

2:00 PM on Fri Jan 25 2008
By grae
3,929 views, 9 comments

too much star trek

Trek's Rumormongering Eats Itself

With all the announcements of minor actors in minor roles, costume leaks and interviews with Zachary Quinto about how awesome it is to play Mr. Spock, it's understandable that you may be confused about where to go for reliable news, rumors and spoilers about JJ Abrams' Star Trek movie. Thankfully, someone has thought of building a site that posts only the most cutting edge information about cinema's latest attempt to go where no man has gone before: TrekRumors. And one of the latest rumors is seriously crucial. More »

9:20 AM on Thu Jan 17 2008
By grae
2,759 views, 12 comments

Latest by SweatsuitHaven: @Pham_Nuwen: Yes, I know. S3 Alias was a Clust.Ter.Fuck of the highest order if you watched S1/2 with devotion. It quicjly became apparent that he'd written himself into a corner and tried to fix it through blatant character assassination. JJ was more »

cloverfield

Where Did Fake Cloverfield Spoilers Come From?

We saw Cloverfield last night, and we'll post a full review on Friday. (Meanwhile, here's a new clip, from much later in the movie than the other clips.) But we were left curious about this incredibly detailed synopsis, which has been all over the Internet for weeks... and which is almost totally wrong except for a few important details. Did this person see a rough cut? Is it a fan-wanker who just wanted some attention? Our theory: Producer J.J. Abrams paid someone to post this. More »

6:20 AM on Wed Jan 16 2008
By charliejane
1,871 views, 10 comments

Latest by Annalee Newitz: I bet this poor nerd got paid like ten bucks to write that whole, ultra-detailed description of a fake movie. So sad. Viral marketers, unionize! more »

satire

When Adventure Becomes . . . Repetitive

A new mashup of movie trailers proves that Star Wars, Narnia, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings and Golden Compass are basically all the same movie with different trappings. But more importantly, it proves that Star Wars is much closer to fantasy than science fiction. Just look how comfortably Yoda fits in with Gandalf and the other magicians. [The World According to Carl]

4:40 PM on Tue Jan 8 2008
By charliejane
25,314 views, 41 comments

cloverfield

The Only Minute Of Cloverfield Viral Video You Should Watch


The still-mysterious Cloverfield monster destroys a deep-sea oil-drilling station in a new set of promo videos. Here's the best minute, in which you actually see the chaos and the people fleeing the sinking platform. The voice-over comes from a fake newscast in Italian, shown on Italian TV. Other videos aired in Spain and Germany. We have another snippet of blurry disaster footage at sea, after the jump. More »

6:20 AM on Mon Jan 7 2008
By charliejane
5,398 views, 25 comments

batman

The Dark Knight Mashed Up with the Campy Knight of 1966

Warner Bros. has been tossing enough promo photos, teaser trailers, viral ads, and movie posters onto the internet to cause a serious glut of Dark Knight materials. Which is where this refreshing slap in the face video comes from. Netizen and part-time editor ntbone has mashed up the sound from the recent trailer for The Dark Knight with clips he's cut together from the 1966 Batman movie, starring Adam West as the caped crusader. More »

2:12 PM on Fri Jan 4 2008
By Kevin Kelly
5,506 views, 24 comments

Latest by Koreanish: This is my favorite episode of Batman, ever. It's permanently etched in my mind. more »

lost

Fly the Same Airline Whose Plane Crashed in "Lost"

Fake billboards for Lost's Oceanic Airlines have been popping up all over the globe, touting their return to service and trips to "Places You Never Imagined," like Ames, Iowa and Tustin, California. They also promote their brand-new website at the bottom of each one of these billboards (which probably weren't cheap to rent). Of course, visiting this site takes you deeper into the rabbit hole. Soon you'll find yourself wasting precious hours while you try to unravel the "mystery" of flight 815. More »

1:20 PM on Fri Jan 4 2008
By Kevin Kelly
19,059 views, 14 comments

Latest by technotica: OMG, I saw this last night (in Ames, IA). I know nothing about Lost. I was more like WTF - why is there an airline advertising in Ames when we have no large airport. more »

i am legend

Watch Your Own Neighborhood Drop Dead

I Am Legend proves NYC looks hauntingly beautiful emptied of people. But if you needed more evidence, the film's official site has a map that lets you visit various locations around the city. At each stop, you can compare the movie version to how it looks right now, courtesy of Google Street View. But we've done all the work for you. Click through for gallery. More »

6:30 AM on Fri Dec 14 2007
By charliejane
427 views, Comment