The hype machine stirring up fanboys for the upcoming Batman installment, The Dark Knight, was working overtime yesterday. The caped crusader’s viral marketing campaign has created several ingenious ways to make comic geeks and film-goers alike salivate over an already highly anticipated movie event due this summer.
Being that 2008 will harbor films featuring other rehashed, but beloved heroes such as Indiana Jones and James Bond, the advertisers, or bat-vertisers if you will (working from their underground cave that can only be reached via secret elevator activated by precise keystrokes on a grand piano) are diligently battling to set their feature apart.
They are already responsible for:
The Ha Ha Times ( in which Dark Knight villain, The Joker, parodies the Gotham Times)
An online campaign by We are the Answer, a group dedicated to fighting Gotham police corruption
A website for Gotham National Bank
A site called Remembering Gina, in which tributes are made to the aforementioned, a victim of violence in Gotham.
A website for the Gotham Police
And a site for the Gotham City Light Rail
Got that?
Photo from Clown Travel Agency
Yesterday (April Fool’s), yet another site showed The Joker was up to his old tricks again (or was he?) Clowntravelagency.com urged would-be gangsters and disciples of The Joker to go to yet another site, to help him hack in. Upon entering the site, I was asked to enter my name, email and phone number. Immediately, my phone rang and a strange number was displayed on my caller ID. I answered hesitantly to hear a gruff voice introduce itself as Gotham police office Jim Gordon of the special crimes task force.
A sting!!
“Officer Gordon” then informed me that I was caught and now had to work as an informant. He said the GPD now had my name, number IP address and would be tracking me. “We’ll be in touch,” he signed off menacingly.
Wow…all this trouble to market a movie that millions of people will shell out major bat-bucks for anyways.
Will the campaign suck in more movie goers or will the hype machine self destruct, making film-goers already tired of a film yet to be released that can’t possibly live up to its own hype?
For now, it seems to be working on me. I appreciate the time and thought being put into creating this Gotham and anxiously await my next assignment from Officer Gordon of the GPD.