Cloverfield Campaign

By Lee Stacey

Cloverfields plot is to track and follow five New York citizens by using a hand held video camera that helps to give it a realistic and immersive experience for the audience by creating an amateur like production as apposed to a very organized and professional style for the camerawork. The movie begins with a monster/creature demolishing a building and as they look into this and try to discover its origins, the iconic statur of liberty comes crashing down and is destroyed. Further on in the movie a character gets lost and others try to save her, especially, the main protagonist. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1060277/plotsummary

Marketing of the campaign:Cloverfield found a lot of its success via using a viral marketing campaign that generated a lot of attention and viewers for the film. For example, a trailer was released that was created to seem as realistic as possible by not using many titles at all throughout the trailer and only at the end which helped to make it feel very unique and created some memorable shots such as the head of the statue of liberty fell leading to an emotional connection with viewers that is iconic and easily recognizable making the image even more speculating and provoking to what the trailer actually is. This can lead to viewers wanting to research the trailer further and actually research the film in a lot of detail and spread news of it further. shown in cinemas before the film transformers, which hinted towards the genre and target market of the film. Another way this realism was added to the viral marketing was by having each character have social media accounts such as Twitter and Facebook so that it was as realistic and immersive to the viewer as it possibly could be with the accounts being used by each character to generate a lot of attention and reach a very wide audience making it a successful strategy. A website was created that did not give the name of the film but instead the release date www.1-08-08.com which released images and information periodically over time building more anticipation and excitement for the film with people coming back to put the pieces together. This would then be posted onto different social media sites and blogs that would reach very wide audiences with people being able to come across it at any time. Another platform that Cloverfield used were widgets that were available on the website to download that can attached to phone home screens, social media pages, etc. that showed the first five minutes of the film which would help to gain attention, it also provided some information on the director, JJ Abrams. To get these widgets people had to provide personal information and would be entered for a prize draw that the winner would win the more they advertised and spread the news of the film. Cloverfield used a made up drink brand in the film and advertised it a lot to try and make it seem as realistic as possible which was a bit confusing as they could have used a real product and gained some money from product placement which is something they could consider for future projects and films. Overall, I believe the reason that Cloverfield was successful was because they generated so much attention and created a lot of focus on the film with people doing more research creating a lot of word of mouth and a lot more success using the strategies they did.