So you casually stroll into the coffee shop to buy yourself some coffee, and the next thing you know, you are watching a fight take place between a guy,who had spilled his drinks onto a girl’s laptop, and said girl. Except suddenly, the girl is slamming the guy against the wall and she is not even touching him! You watch in horror as she lets out a ghoulish scream and your hairs stand on the edge; books are flying off the shelf and tables are moving around on their own. It’s like you are watching some kind of freaky movie, except this is your life!
This is the new promotion for the movie ‘Carrie’, based on Stephen King’s best seller, starring Chloë grace moretz and Julianne Moore. This remake is said to be “disturbed” and more horrific than before.
Personally, I feel that this video is one of the most original marketing stunts that has been done to promote a movie. In less than 24 hours, the video has garnered international media coverage, and viewed close to a million times. Fans are going crazy over it, and has fans from other franchises supporting it now. A pretty clever move because ‘Carrie’ by itself isn’t brand, and having other fandoms (X-Men, Harry Potter fans are creating jokes about this now) jump on board before the film is released is sure to keep their ratings up.
This is definitely more fun than just releasing a trailer!
Some of the other promotional videos that went viral:
1. The last exorcism
At the peak of chatroulette,they set up a chat with a cute girl who would like she was about to take off her top. But instead, the people watching would see her eyes roll back and hear screams, sort of like a mini-possession session. The expressions of pure terror on the guys faces are priceless!
2. The Muppet Movie
The Muppets went all out on this one and created a video “The Piggy with the Froggy Tattoo” spoofing that summer’s blockbusters including Twilight, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Avengers,and in the process reinvented themselves and became relevant to a new younger generation.
3. Paranormal Activity
This movie was made on a shaky hand-held camera with a 15K budget in the director’s own home with unknown actors and later went on to gross over hundreds of millions of dollars and spewing many copycats along the way. The film’s marketing efforts went viral when they used Eventful.com, where people could “demand” to play a movie in their city. Twitter played a pivotal role as well. Viral videos for the next parts of the movies got increasingly more scary.
This new form of advertising has certainly gotten a lot of attention with its creativity. Will this be the future of movie marketing? A surreal mix of cinema and reality colliding together? I am all for this; I was getting tired of the over played Dub music which has been overused since Inception.
