If you’re anything like me, you are thoroughly pysched for the upcoming summer movie season. Who wouldn’t be with the likes of Transformers, Pirates of the Caribbean: At the World’s End and the new Harry Potter flick coming to the big screen? While the anticipation of all these movies has me really nerding out, the marketing for a sequel that won’t see the theatre until 2008 has me the most excited of all. The Dark Knight, the sequel to 2005’s Batman Begins, is already hitting fandom hard with their unique brand of movie marketing. Now for a long time the majority of movie marketing has been all about producing an enticing trailer and getting that trailer to the viewing public via “strategic” media buys (ok…by shoving it down our throats). More recently, however, we’ve been witness to a rich array of innovative and engaging marketing ploys that go beyond the traditional trailer. Early incarnations of this you may even remember. For the release of Spider-Man 2 in 2004, Sony Pictures supplied downloadable templates that bloggers could use to theme their page as well as a controversial “sponsorship” of the in-field bases in 15 Major League Baseball stadiums

The marketing team for The Dark Knight looks to be taking movie marketing to a new level. Sure there’s going to be a teaser trailer and eventually a full trailer, but before all that, before the movie is even finished shooting, The Dark Knight is finding its way onto the internet and even retail outlets. Even this isn’t that peculiar in this day and age. However, promoting the movie as a franchise villian is the unexpected (and welcome) twist.

I guess it’s most appropriate to start from the beginning. On or around May 13, 2007 Warner Bros. put up a Dark Knight logo onto their website. No biggie there; tons of movies do this way before a big media push is even on the horizon. I giggled my comic book geek giggle and got on with my life. That is until this was made available only 4 days later via the same Warner Bros. website that the Dark Knight logo was originally found. It’s Harvey Dent and he’s running for District Attorney. Okay, they have my attention now. For those that aren’t cool enough to “be in the know”, Harvey Dent is a significant character in the Batman universe…he eventually becomes the infamous villian Two-Face in the comic book series (Tommy Lee Jones played the character in Batman Forever, but I’ll give them a mulligan on that one). Needless to say, fans like myself thought this faux campaign poster was really cool. We also wanted even more. Who’s next? A shot of Batman? The Joker? Fans clamoured to the internet to discuss. Discussions didn’t last long as only 2 days later ANOTHER little morsal of Batman goodness hit the net. And then it go weird (in a fantastic way). It seems that “someone” created a website called ibelieveinharveydenttoo.com. On the site was an alternate version of the original Harvey Dent poster.

There was also a space at the bottom of the site to put in your email address. If enough email addresses were submitted, the above poster would start to disintegrate pixel by pixel until a hidden image was uncovered. If you heard a loud ‘BOOM’ on May 19th, it was probably the millions of geeks heads exploding in unison. This was it, we were finally going to get a glimpse of the Joker. People sat at their computers reloading the page as often as they could as the image behind the poster became clearer and clearer. Finally, the JOKER can be seen in all his glory.

 

After seeing this, I think I passed out. The excitement was too much. I came to only to realize that there was even more! Apparently, my bretheren at the Meltdown comic book store in Hollywood, CA found playing cards strewn throughout the store. What’s so special about that you ask? The playing cards were all jokers with a special “I Believe In Harvey Dent Too” message scribbled across them.

After seeing this, I think I passed out. The excitement was too much. I came to only to realize that there was even more! Apparently, my bretheren at the comic book store in Hollywood, CA found playing cards strewn throughout the store. What’s so special about that you ask? The playing cards were all jokers with a special “I Believe In Harvey Dent Too” message scribbled across them. 

 

After seeing that one, I’m pretty sure I passed out again. After a 2 day recuperation period, the Joker hits us in the stomach with a fist full of awesome yet again. The website that had the Joker image up is now “down”. Error. Page Not Found…or is it? If you higlight the error message on the page with your mouse and then drag that throughout the entire page you’re inundated with “hahaha’s” with a random letter thrown in here and there. String those random letters together and you get a sinister “See you in December” message from the Joker. Sigh. This is about the time I passed out yet again.

So there you have it. The early marketing for the new Batman flick. It’s engaging, authentic and finally something different. Did I mention this isn’t coming out until 2008? They’ve already got a tremendous amount of buzz going for this film and it hasn’t even hit post-production yet. More than that, it looks like this marketing team has a full and complete grasp of who they’re talking to and what makes them tick; a feat we as marketers struggle with everyday.

It looks like 42 Entertainment is the mastermind behind all of this as they have recently registered seeyouindecember.com. I was curious as to who exactly this brain trust was behind the earlyThe Dark Knight marketing so I went and perused their site. One particular section of their website struck me instantly. It simply lays out how they see things. I personally think it’s both fascinating and ideal the way they approach “marketing” to a consumer. I urge you to take a look. How can such principles be applied to marketing cars or diapers? It’s a tough question, but a question nonetheless that is interesting to investigate. I say start from the ground up. Go to the consumer. Don’t wait for them to come to you. If you’re selling cars, go to autoblog.com, dealerships, car shows or enthusiast websites. Sure syndicated numbers are a big help, but putting a face to a number is invaulable. It looks like 42 Entertainment has done just that. They know where Batman fandom is and where they look for information. Upon realizing that, they jumped at utilizing those spaces to spread the The Dark Knight word. I’m going to take a page from their book in my everyday work life. I’m going to stop trying to “market” to people and start trying enter into an authentic conversation with them. Hey, if it worked for Batman it can work for me. Right?

P.S. I’ll be sure and keep everyone updated on the ongoing ridiculousness that is this marketing push. Stay tuned.