Viral Marketing. Cloverfield.

Viral marketing is a form of marketing that relies on people to pass along a marketing message, it can be highly successful is there is a high pass along rate from person to person. But if there is a low pass along rate the message only reaches a small amount of people, henceforth ruining a viral marketing campaign.


The movie Cloverfield directed by Matt Reeves is a prime example of a well run viral marketing campaign. The first teaser trailer to be released for Cloverfield did not have a name attached to it, just a date 1-18-2008. The only thing known was that it was produceed by JJ Abrams (Lost) and was something to do with Paramount Pictures, as their logo appeared on the trailer, but Paramount denied that such a project existed, also a poster was relased which depicts a decpitated Statue of Liberty, again this had no name attached to it, only a date.


Then a site was found www.1-18-08.com, which at first only had one image on it, the image of two women staring shocked at something. The image had a timestamp of  "01/18/2008 12:36A." If left on this site for long enough you could hear the monsters roar. Also the site had a number on it, which when texted you would receive a ringtone of the monsters roar and a wallpaper of a destroyed Manhattan. Also there were a range of sites to follow and keep the audience interested, there was www.slusho.jp which is a drinks company that the movie mains character is leaving america to work for and also of which a character in the first trailer can be seen wearing a t-shirt of the companies logo. There was www.tagruato.jp which is a deep sea drilling company that is owned by the CEO of Slusho and had one of their drilling rigs destroyed by the monster, also there was a range of myspace pages for the characters where they posted information on what they are doing with there lives.


The makers of Cloverfield even held the party that features in the film in real life, the night before the movies release.


The producers  also kept the audience interested by constantly changing the name of the film,
-1-18-08(USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Cheese (USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Clover(USA) (Fake Working Title)
-Monstrous(USA) (Promotional Title)
-Slusho(USA) ( Fake Working Title)
-Untitled JJ Abrams Project(USA) (Working Title)


This is the full list of the websites associated with the Cloverfield movie.

• 1-18-08
• Slusho
• Tagruato Corp.
• T.I.D.O. Wave
• MySpace Pages: Rob, Hawk, Beth, Hud, Lily, Marlena,Jamie
• JamieAndTeddy.com (password: jllovesth)

Overall I would say that the viral marketing campaign for Cloverfield was very successful managing to keep audiences interested right up to the films release, this shows that even without naming your movie you can keep the audience interested.