Viral Marketing in Films

Viral marketing is a way of promoting a film by having awareness of the film spread across an audience, mostly via word of mouth. It is cost-effective, making it an effective marketing tool for small-budget, independent films like Shifty.

Shifty's viral marketing campaign was an email campaign, allowing users to 'frame' a mate by uploading a picture of them participating in a drug deal.  However, the campaign was soon banned by the advertising standards agency. Arguably, this worked in the film's favour because the media attention that the campaign generated would also result in more publicity for the film.

Larger, more mainstream films also have viral marketing campaigns. Perhaps the most successful example of this was The Dark Knight's viral marketing campaign.

The Dark Knight's viral marketing campaign  gave a checklist fans for fans to complete to uncover information about the unreleased film. Eventually, the 'whysoserious' viral site showed the first picture of Joker along with 'see you in
december'

This type of marketing was unconventional because it pulled in an audience making them find out information, rather than conventional means of marketing when information is pushed into an audience.