Viral marketing is a relatively new buzzword, and there's an insane amount of it going on to promote The Dark Knight. The folks behind it are setting the bar to new heights with every little piece of their elaborate puzzle, appealing directly to the hardcore fans who thrive on the anticipation for the film and the sheer fun of the hunt. Here's a recap from one of those hardcore fans who have played along with it from the beginning. Part One here takes us up to December of 2007 - yes, there's been that much going on.
by Katrina Lehto
Fancast Movies
There has been a lot that has happened for the viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight, created by Warner Brothers and 42 Entertainment. It starts slow in May of 2007 when several websites went up, including Thedarkknight.warnerbros.com, which linked to Ibelieveinharveydent.com. After that comic shops started seeing playing cards with "I believe in Harvey Dent too! Hahahaha!" on them. This lead to the website ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. Eventually, this page is replaced with a "Page Not Found" error that has a hidden message found by highlighting the background - "See You in December".
It really got started in San Diego at Comic Con last year and I was upset that I missed it - I was waiting for December. Earlier I had gotten a dollar bill with the Joker's face stuck on it, as well as "Why So Serious" written beneath it. I didn't put this together with the fact that I should have been going to whysoserious.com, a page advertising for Joker henchmen. Instead, I waited in a line that wrapped around the convention center to get into the Warner Brothers panel while the action was really going on outside the building.
The website had given coordinates to a location near the convention center and a countdown clock set to go off the next morning at 10am. Hundreds of people gathered at the time and place listed on Whysoserious.com. At 10am, a phone number is written by a plane in the sky. The crowd painted themselves up as Jokers and, working with friends on-line, went on a scavenger hunt through the city. After solving all the clues from the hunt, a fan was selected to be 'abducted and killed' in place of the Joker. The participants at San Diego were given clown masks as a reward, while online players were rewarded with the first teaser trailer for The Dark Knight. Whysoserious.com is shut down and replaced with Rent-a-clown.com, a clown rental company whose "employees" are the fans who put on the Joker make up for the scavenger hunt. For those who were more computer oriented, the paged contained the message "made you look" hidden in its source code.
After that, the viral campaign went dark until a few weeks before Halloween. On October 17th, Whysoserious.com turned back on. This time, there was a picture of a pumpkin there, with one candle lit in a hollow in the shape of a Bat. It was very similar in style to the jack-o-lantern in "The Long Halloween" by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, often argued to be one of the best Batman stories ever written. The jack-o-lantern slowly rotted on one side and one side only (the left side), making most of the people paying attention speculate about something about Two-Face being revealed. At the stroke of midnight on Halloween, the candle went out and the website updated with a workbench. On that workbench were 49 locations. Two of them were in Seattle, where I live. One of them was obviously the Tully's T and the other one, I wasn't sure where it was but by following the clues provided, I was able to locate the giant 'E' and take a picture of it. My picture of the giant 'E' (on the side of an optical clinic) was not the one used but I still have the picture on my camera. It took most of the day for all of the letters to be assembled. People in Albuquerque were very, very slow and I personally ended up posting on a few bulletin boards and communities for the town asking for some help.
Once it was all done, the message ended up being "The only sensible way to live in this world is without rules." When you clicked on the workbench, a sound clip of the Joker speaking was played and it said "Tonight, you're going to break your one rule," and was followed by a new image of the Joker. This led to rorysdeathkiss.com. The name of this site was a reference to the name that The Dark Knight was filiming under - Rory's First Kiss. On this new site, there was a challenge to all of the clowns - take photographs in clown make-up by major landmarks in groups as large as you could manage. I rounded up a few friends, some clown make-up, some fake blood, a crowbar and my trusty camera. The picture of me and my comrades that made it up on the site is here. The rest of our pictures can be seen here. Poor, poor Barbara Gordon. At midnight, the end of the deadline for photo submissions, Rorysdeathkiss.com was updated with a new note indicating that all who had submitted a photo would receive something in the mail shortly after Thanksgiving.
It was awesome to receive 25 copies of The Gotham Times in the mail. You could then see an on-line version of this at thegothamtimes.com. There were many things to see here. There was an email address used by the Joker: humanresources@whysoserious.com. There were also a small ton of linked websites discovered: new websites are discovered: Thehahahatimes.com (in response to The Gotham Times site), Wearetheanswer.org, Rememberinggina.org, Gothamcab.com, Gothampolice.com, Gothamcityrail.com, Gothamnationalbank.com, GVAFoundation.org, Acmesecuritysystems.com, Gothamusd.net and Saintswithunschurch.org.
A puzzle on thehahahatimes.com led to a personality test that, at the moment, did nothing other than tell you how the Joker would rate you from "Mime" to "A Scream". A few days later, however, an e-mail message arrived from The Joker giving clues about how to go further. There were numbers given and counting the number of letters on the results of the personality quiz spelled out "Mausoleum", leading to Whysoserious.com/mausoleum. Going to that website, you were confronted with a safe. The blood spatters on the clue spelled out E I T M O R F F F A T Y. Rearranged, this was discovered to say "Time for Taffy" which was a reference back to an article in The Gotham Times talking about Johnny "Taffyface" Linata and his time of death - 7:38. I tried and tried to make that work somehow as a combination. After some frustration and more than a little wasted work time, I remembered I was working for the Joker and changed the clock on my computer to 7:38. The safe opened up instantly and revealed another note from the Joker, applauding the ability to think outside the box. There were bits and pieces of things inside the safe, including an evidence bag $6.26, a pocket knife, a wallet and an ID for the Gotham Unified School District.
At the same time, there was an activity going on with the Gotham Cab Company and the website Bettyshouseofpies.com. There was a police wiretap of the House of Pies revealed and which eventually lead to audio clips of the arrest of a few corrupt policemen. At much the same time, at the end of November, a note was added to The Hahaha Times leading to a new puzzle. This puzzle was located at Whysoserious.com/theperfectgetaway. Clues were given which, when traced on a map of Gotham City, delivered a hidden message that led to Whysoserious.com/outoftime. Clicking on the note at that site, you were linked to a photo of a dead body in a morgue. The tag on the toe identifies the body as Frederick Alder. Frederick was the would-be carjacker who was foiled by Batman, according to an article in The Gotham Times.
Stay tuned for Part 2, to find out more of just how crazy these marketing folks are!
Comments (1)
thanks for the info. keep us updated.
thanks for getting me back on track.
Posted by Richard | July 15, 2008 4:38 PM
Posted on July 15, 2008 16:38