The perplexing public-service announcements began turning up two weeks ago, splashed across bus-stop advertisements in America's 15 biggest cities, including Los Angeles. "Bus bench for humans only," the ads' banner copy proclaims, accompanied by a rough rendering of an outer space alien that has been crossed out, "Ghostbusters" style, with a strike-through circle. "Beware! Non-human secretions may corrode metal!"
If you happen to be among the tens of thousands of inquiring minds who have called the posted telephone number (listed beneath the ominous-sounding imperative: "Report non-humans") or punched its URL -- D-9.com -- into an Internet browser, you may already know the ads' true purpose. They are part of a viral marketing campaign for Sony Pictures' documentary-style sci-fi thriller "District 9," which arrives in theaters in August.
"We wanted to do something provocative and that would create a stir," said Marc Weinstock, Sony's co-president of worldwide theatrical marketing. "But we had no idea to what extent we'd connect."
Sony's president of digital marketing, Dwight Caines, said: "In two weeks, there have been 33,000 phone calls. Two thousand five hundred people left voice messages about alien sightings. And 92% of those calls come from cellphones, indicating that people are opting in, on the spot, in the streets."
By their very nature, viral movie marketing campaigns rely upon a temporary suspension of disbelief. After initial confusion wears off, as the operating principal goes, people will agree to play along with what is essentially a massively scaled practical joke -- and by extension, tell a friend about it and go see the movie -- predicated on the understanding that there will be a big "reveal" to make it all worthwhile. Ever since the viral marketing impact of 1999's "The Blair Witch Project," which had movie fans wondering whether the low-budget indie horror flick was actually a documentary gone horribly wrong, virals have been the stuff of fanboy dreams and movie marketer reverie in terms of low-cost, high-yield buzz.
"District 9's" stealth campaign, however, has already accomplished what a wildly diverse array of virals unleashed on an unsuspecting public this year could not -- stand out from the pack.
The beachhead for its high-minded, meta-narrative promo push is the movie's website, listed on bus benches, bus shelters and billboards.
