Jul
13
2007

The Viral Marketing of J.J. Abrams “Mystery Movie”

I’m sure most of you have seen, or at least heard of, J.J. Abrams’ much-talked-about trailer for the untitled movie that was aired before Transformers last week. The web is swimming with gossip and conspiracy theories on what the film is about.

If you haven’t seen the trailer yet, you can check out the hi-def version on Apple’s trailer site (so forget about trying to search YouTube for those short-lived, cell phone video uploads that were posted the first week of Transformer‘s release). Watch it yet? Good. Now tell me that isn’t one of the most intruiging trailers you ever seen. My mouth was agape when I saw that Statue of Liberty head come hurtling at the mob of people in the street (it looked an awful lot larger, proportion-wise, on the big screen though… but, meh!).

The site EthanHaasWasRight.com has been loosely linked to the J.J. Abrams flick, but in an email to Harry from Ain’t It Cool News he denied it:

Regarding the online stuff you posted: yeah, we’re doing some fun stuff on the web. But, obviously, if the movie doesn’t kick some massive ASS, who gives a rat’s about what’s online? So as you can imagine, we’re focusing mostly on THAT. For what it’s worth, the only site of ours that people have even FOUND is the 1-18-08.com site. The others (like the Ethan Haas sites) have nothing to do with us.

Why wouldn’t he deny it? It might all be part of his plan to mind boggle us all! Wait a minute. He said “the only site of ours that people have even found”. That means there’s more 1-18-08-related official sites out there! OMG… why won’t he just tell us what they are!? Ah… you gotta love viral internet marketing. I haven’t seen things like this since Snakes On A Plane. Oh, and if you’re trying to figure out how to crack the Ethan site, but too lazy to follow the instructions, YoPress.com has got all the info on that.

1-18-08.com is the official home of the yet-to-be-released film. The site itself is an enigma: Presently, it’s content is simply three stills from the movie. Now, on the surface they don’t look like anything much, but if you were to look a lot closer (like thousands of new fans are trying to do) you’ll begin to pick away at the visuals, and find clues as to what the film may be about.

Try that one image of the two, scared women staring up at the sky: WHAT DI RASS ISMystery photo from 1-18-08.com DAT BETWEEN DEM?!?! I swear, that looks a lot like some type of demon to me! Is J.J. Abrams’ film (also going by the name “Cloverfield” and “Slusho” on the web) an apocalypse movie perhaps? In the trailer, the video camera panned up from some sushi before interviewing an Asian guy about Rob’s departure… then came the ‘roar’. Could it be GODZILLA?!!? There’s lots of speculation… but I guess we’ll just have to wait until we get closer to 01-18-08 to find out.

What do you think?

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