Task 2, Existing Viral Campaigns

Marketing has developed incredibly over recent years, we are now in an era where organisations are employing viral techniques to immerse the public in their product. The film market in particular have ventured into using these methods, creating a real ‘buzz’ around upcoming movies. The viral campaign I am going to explore is for the 2010 Disney film ‘Tron Legacy’, a sci-fi movie starring Garrett Hedlund, Jeff Bridges and Olivia Wilde. To generate interest into the film, which is a sequel of ‘Tron’ (created in 1982), an innovative strategy known as ‘Flynn Lives’ was created by company 42 Entertainment, it became one of the most complex marketing schemes of all time and offered people a 360 degree fully immersive experience combining posters, websites, viral games, scavenger hunts, physical rewards and more.

The film was set to be released in December 2010 but the idea began 10 months prior to this, in February, and was designed to entice a younger ‘media saavy’ audience as well as fans of the original ‘Tron’ film.  This concept was a backstory in which the main character of the 1982  movie (Kevin Flynn) has gone missing. Posters appeared, Facebook pages created and a viral website was launched, inviting people to uncover the truth of the characters disappearance with the tagline ‘Join the search for Kevin Flynn’. Artefacts from the films also appeared in the real word because they were sent to what are known as ‘Key Influences’ e.g. reviewers, bloggers etc. with the expectation that they would post the news and it would spread like a virus reaching the eyes and ears of many. This soon happened and users from all over the web became involved in online challenges creating a community all with one motive, to track down Flynn. The underground movement gained more and more popularity which eventually broke out into the real world when a scavenger hunt sent fans to a replica copy of an arcade from the original movie. After the discovery, hundreds of people fled down to immerse themselves in gadgets etc. that could be expected from the new movie, a great piece of promotion from the marketing campaign.

It is incredible to think how extensive and interactive this campaign was, but the artificial reality game (ARG) didn’t end there with players continuing to unlock a series of new websites which pushed the whole experience forward. The screenshots below show just one of the pages from the Flynn Lives website whereby if players successful played the games and unlocked clues they were given sneak peaks into the new film.

The rewards were often physical as well, dedicated players to the campaign found things in their post after signing up. This is a strong technique because it would keep consumers continuously interested in the ‘game’ they are involved with.

The borders of reality were blurred even further when a character from the original film was interviewed and announced the next step in the ARG, a live ‘Encom’ press conference. It is important to remember that Encom is a fictional organisation in the movie so as previously mentioned, this viral marketing campaign really has shattered the line between the real world and fiction, allowing users into a false universe. The true power of social networking was proved as Flynn Lives members decided to ‘crash’ the conference through communication on Facebook. By debating and discussing their motive throughout the whole experience, more and more people were intrigued by what the upcoming movie could offer and thus the likelihood for a successful film was rising. In an exciting conclusion at the crashed ‘Encom’ conference, a new character called Sam (played by Garrett Hedlund) parachuted into the venue claiming to be Kevin Flynn’s son also on a search for his lost father.

All these techniques, from the simple distribution of posters to real life scavenger hunts with hundreds of people, gained a film which previously had little publicity, a huge amount of recognition. The viral marketing campaign for Tron: Legacy wiped out all barriers between what was in the film world and our own reality creating an experience so interactive and vivid for people, it made the upcoming film the most highly anticipated movie of 2010. No other media product has used such a high level of technology and innovation to market it’s cause.

Unit 56: Digital Communications- DCM’s

Email- Email is short for Electronic Mail and is ‘the transmission of messages over communications networks’. It is a fast, flexible and reliable service and most mainframes and computer networks have an email system within them. Messages are composed within a text editor and then can be sent to the recipient by typing in their email address. Sent messages are stored in electronic mailboxes until the person picks them up, either through checking their mailbox regularly or being notified when they have received one.

IM- Instant Messaging is a

SMS
Bulletin Boards
Discussion Forums
Blogs
Newsgroups
Internet Telephony
Conferencing

Unit 56: Digital Communications- DCP’s

HTTP– HyperTextTransfer Protocol,  is an application protocol used for data communication on the WorldWide Web. It’s main function is to take a message written in hypertext and tell web browsers what action to take in response.  When somebody enters a URL(uniform resource locator) into the internet and presses enter, a http command is sent to the web server directing them to fetch and transmit the web page required.

WAP- WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol and is a technical specification which allows people to access information over a wireless network, particularly handheld devices such as mobile phones.

GSM- Meaning Global System for Mobile Communications, GSM is the most widely used cell phone technology and is a set which describes protocols for 2G networks. It is a development from the 1G analog network and is ‘optimised for full duplex and voice telephony’.

3G- 3G is one step up from the previous 2G technology and stands for third generation. It is a phone standard which enables service providers e.g. T-Mobile, Orange, Vodaphone to offer consumers more services such as mobile broadband. 3G is hugely popular because it allows browsing the web, checking emails and downloading files to be done at a fast speed. Most new phones on the market are enabled with third generation technology.

MMS- MMS stands for multimedia messaging service, many people refer to it just as ‘picture messaging’ because it is popularly used to send images from one handset to another however it can also be used to send audio, video and rich text. MMS goes a  step further than SMS as it allows longer messages to be sent beyond the 160 character limit that the Short Message Service holds.

GPRS- General Packet Radio Service is a cellular networking service integrated into 2.5G mobiles which supports WAP, SMS and other data communications and provides faster data transfer speeds than older networks. Before the introduction of 3 and 4G it was sold as a package by service providers.

BLUETOOTH- Bluetooth is a piece of wireless technology used to exchange data over a short distance, bypassing the complication of computer wires etc. A very secure, short range network is created through a special radio frequency. The Bluetooth chip can be plugged into computers, faxes, mobile phones and digital cameras and with the advancement of technology a lot of these items have the technology fitted inside it already.

ADSL- ADSL stands for Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line and is a technology used for high speed Internet access because it allows faster data transmission than a conventional voiceband modem can provide. ADSL is typically not as fast as cable Internet and is therefore suited for streaming multimedia and moderate gaming etc.

BROADBAND- Described as a ‘high bandwidth connection to the Internet’, Broadband is much faster and easier to use than modems as information is sent and downloaded at a quicker speed. Websites, text, graphics, music and videos can all be experienced in real time thanks to Broadband.

VOIP- VOIP stands for Voice Over Internet Protocol and allows you to get phone service delivered through your internet connection as opposed to from your telephone company. Whilst the service doesn’t always offer 911 or 411 numbers/telephone directory listings, it usually has a lower rate than traditional phone companies.

Lesson One, Task One: Memes

What is a meme?

A meme is a cultural symbol or ‘social idea’ which travels and expands virally from person to person usually at speed, thanks to the internet. Often described as ‘a discrete package of culture’ they can be videos, famous stories, jokes, parodies or expressions of speech however these days most memes, if not all, are humour based. The way that memes evolve is that the main picture content stays the same but people can personalise it by adding their own text/ wordplay to make it funny for them. This spreads through email and social networking sites until thousands of people have seen or adapted their own memes.

Who creates them and how are they created?

Anybody can go online and create a meme, there are websites such as ‘http://www.quickmeme.com/make/’, which hold thousands of famous meme templates so that all users have to do is add their own text. It is possibly because of how simple they are to create that memes are so popular in this day and age.

How are memes published and who publishes them?

Memes are published on the internet, a lot of people post them directly onto Facebook for their friends/family to see or on their own personal blogs. The most well known places for memes to be broadcast are websites Tumblr and 4chan because this is where a certain demographic of people search for them, they can then continue spreading the social meme.

My favourite meme- Bad Luck Brian

This meme (bad luck brian) has proved very popular on the internet, there are hundreds of variations online which include the iconic picture of a stereotypical ‘geeky’ boy and a humorous caption. The way the text is positioned possibly contributes to how funny it is. For example, if you look at any of the above images and read the top line it is like the build up to a joke and the bottom segment is the ‘reveal’. With this particular meme it is the fact that there is a positive or mutual situation like ‘surfing the web’ which is then turned into something very unlucky. I believe people find them so funny is because their likelihood is very slim or even impossible as the joke can sometimes be literal i.e surfing has been used in two senses, the internet browsing way and the water sport way. People of all ages can find this funny but it is presumably teenagers that find it so intriguing as they might relate to the character involved.

The ‘bad luck brian’ meme has been copied numerous times with the situations described changing to meet different demographics sense of humour. I originally found it linked on Twitter, the user made a comment such as ‘reminds me of myself’ and linked the meme. Many people had ‘retweeted’ it and i think this is a perfect example of the way a simple meme can travel across social networking and the internet as a whole.