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With everyone seemingly focused on reliving 2009 and reminiscing over the first decade of the 21^st Century, it’s refreshing to see some intriguing speculation about the year ahead. Advertising Age has posted a two part discussion about the anticipated digital marketing trends in 2010. I recommend checking out parts one and two at their website as they discuss a wide range of topics, but a couple are particularly important to us.


The piece structures an interesting argument around the future of viral videos. They explain that virals are expected to move from “art” to “science.” Essentially, over the past few years, popular viral videos have been developed and popularized without any specific goal or campaign in mind from the producer. Now that digital advertisers are aware of the potential of viral campaigns to spread the word, they will begin developing larger, comprehensive campaigns that build upon interest generated from viral videos to help promote a product. While there will always be the “fail” video on YouTube that receives 100,000 hits, expect to see more instances of companies using viral videos to jumpstart or perpetuate a larger campaign. 





The article also comments on mobile marketing’s prospects. As a medium, mobile communication has been slower to adapt to digital marketing than the Internet over the past few years (I wrote about the shortcomings in a previous article). With costs of service plans and hardware expected to go down (or at least become more reasonable), consumer spending on smart phones should increase. Consequently, companies will be motivated to create more user friendly mobile browsers that can lend itself to mobile marketing. To me, the mobile medium can be a pivotal tool in viral campaigns, and technological improvements will allow more campaigns to be more mobile based in 2010.


All signs point to digital marketing continuing to develop in the coming year. As such, I think there’s reason to be excited that viral campaigns will continue to emerge and captivate our attention.


What do you think of these expected trends? Agree? Disagree? Let us know below.

Our review of the Sherlock Holmes viral comes from forum member Steve Kidd:


Before I begin my viral review, I must warn those of you who have yet to see the recent Sherlock Holmes movie that this article contains minor spoilers. If you have yet to see the film, I recommend you read Dan’s excellent review of it, see the film, then come back to this article. I saw the movie just recently, and I loved every minute of it. Robert Downey, Jr. was FANTASTIC as Holmes, and Jude Law was equally great as Watson. The film’s viral marketing was, for the most part, just as entertaining.


Back in August, a website with a mysterious URL address that was believed to tie into the film appeared out of nowhere. After entering the requested password “ADLER” (the last name of Rachel McAdams’ character, Irene Adler), visitors were greeted to a quick video message by a mysterious hooded man, and then were prompted to enter their email addresses for further updates to this new game. After that, devoted Holmes fans waited patiently until the game was afoot.


Finally, the day before Halloween, the viral went full steam ahead to reveal a new, Facebook-supported game called “221b”. Those who signed up for the email updates 2 months earlier would receive a telegram-like email alerting them to the start of this event, and then would receive updates for each new chapter as it continued along. The game was restricted to those with Facebook accounts only, as it utilized your account to post your rank at the end of mostly all of the weekly segments. After signing up, you could go at it solo or pair up with an active Facebook buddy and double-team each case.

The game, which consisted of a prologue and 8 “chapters”, continued for the next 7 weeks leading up the release of the movie, with new chapters release every Monday afternoon. Each chapter began and ended with video clips of either the people who hired you for each case or your boss, Inspector Lestrade, who, in a nice crossover, is played by the same actor who plays him in the movie! You could choose to play as either Holmes, where you did investigative work and stealth-oriented mini-games, or as Watson, where you mostly interviewed suspects. For every article read, trail followed to the end, successful interview, etc, you received reputation points that boosted your posted rank for that chapter, but did nothing else. You could also choose to swap between both characters to earn extra reputation points without affecting your progress!


The storyline of the game centered around the mysterious murders of 5 missing girls, and it’s up to Holmes and Watson to find out who’s responsible for these crimes. The story helps keep the players engaged and ties in very well with the movie itself by covering the events leading up directly to the opening scene of the movie, in which Holmes and Watson successfully rescue the would-be 6th victim and apprehend Lord Blackwood, the mastermind behind the disappearances and killings.


Which, sadly, bring me to the one major flaw of this viral: how it ends. After the completion of Chapter 8, the ending video requires you to see the movie and then return to the site to enter one last code to finish the game once and for all. After entering the code “Gladstone” (the name of Holmes and Watson’s dog), what do hard working players like me get for our efforts? Well, with the exception of a quick epilogue video mentioning Moriarty, we get NOTHING. No swag, no movie clip, nothing to honestly reward us for our efforts. Oh well, here’s hoping WB gives us something more substantial for the inevitable sequel.


Aside from its disappointing ending, the viral marking for Sherlock Holmes is pretty much the best movie-related viral of 2009. I felt like I was kept occupied for the past few weeks before the movie’s release solving mysteries and actually thinking like a detective. It may not be rewarding like The Dark Knight viral was, but in terms of keeping in with the continuity of the movie and giving fans of the classic detective a great connection it it, I’d say it successfully got the job done!


Final grade: A-

Thanks to Current, we have a pretty funny video from the Rotten Tomatoes Show about how large guys (usually antagonists) never feel pain in movies, as you might have noticed in the new Sherlock Holmes film. Take a look:

In our final podcast of the year, I am joined by staff members Nick, Scott, Iain, and Corey, as well as forum members Ronan, Kris, and Anthony. We cover our favorite viral moments of 2009 and discuss what movies we loved, hated, and secretly enjoyed.

Subscribe to the podcast on

As odd as that sounds, that’s exactly what you get to do!


If you can remember back to DAY FOUR of my 12 Days of Viral run, I spoke about the movies that have pages to allow you to “something-fy yourself”, you are given the chance to change yourself into possibly a character of that film. Well, now we have two more to add to your collection.


With the early release of next year’s Daybreakers, you now have to opportunity to scare up you friends into thinking that you are vampire. And they are next! Head over to the Vampire Recruiter, and find out how to sign up.


And now with the wonderfully placed release of District 9 on DVD, their site, District9Movie, gives you the chance of a lifetime! Want to let your friends know that you were there in Johannesburg, well now you can! (please note that all pictures make you a chubby guy with a pink head or a lady with a bad part – no refunds)

We talk alot about augmented reality here at MovieViral, and with good reason. It has a lot of potential, of which we are only scratching the surface. We are coming into an age in which interactivity is the key to successful marketing. However, technology never sits idly, so now we have what may be the new augmented reality: holograms. Now, true holograms like that in Star Wars are not currently a viable marketing tool, as they are expensive and hard to create (see Minority Report for its potential, though). However, new technology is allowing us to experience perspective viewing for the first time, similar to how a hologram would.


What do I mean by “perspective viewing”? It means if you are watching something, then as you move or the object moves, you can actually see the image from different perspectives or angles. Usually, if you watch TV, if you move, the image stays the same. What new technologies, like the accelerometer and compass in the iPhone, do is change what you see depending on its orientation to the viewer. See the two videos below to see what I mean.

The second video is a technology called “Hyper Reality” or “Head Tracking”, and supposedly Apple is interested in using it for displays. Both methods are extremely useful, as they give the viewer a much more immersive experience when watching videos or playing games. You may even noticed the Avatar-like helicopter in the first video. Just imagine playing a game like Avatar where you can actually move your head to see around trees, or move your iPhone to get a better view of the Enterprise from Star Trek. The possibilities seem endless.


What do you think? Are holograms/perspective viewing the wave the future or just a gimmick?

We have yet another sketch comedy website doing a great movie parody. This time, we have Free Love Forum with their video “Avatar: The Making of the Bootleg”, which takes you behind the scenes of the revolutionary new bootleg of the revolutionary new movie.

This holiday weekend was a big one for Hollywood, with several records being broken, thanks to the two most anticipated films of the month and a chipmunk. First of all, Sherlock Holmes broke the record for biggest Christmas Day opening with $24.6 million on Friday. Guess who’s #2 on that list: Avatar, which had an equally impressive $23.1 million on Friday, and even beat Holmes for the weekend. What makes Avatar‘s weekend even more special is that it had the best second weekend ever for a film with $75.6 million (The Dark Knight had previously held the record with $75.2 million). That’s a drop of only 2% from its first weekend’s $77 million opening. Any concerns about the $230 million plus movie making back its budget are out the window now that its worldwide gross is $623.6 million as of today.


You might have guessed that these large numbers might mean something larger for the weekend, and you’d be right. With $273 million, this was the highest grossing weekend EVER in film history, out surpassing last year’s July opening of The Dark Knight, which helped bring in a total $260.5 million for the box office. The great opening for Sherlock Holmes also made history, as it helped Warner Bros. become the first studio to ever gross $2 billion in a year. Overall, not a bad weekend.


Here is the full top 10 list for the Christmas weekend, via Box Office Mojo:

1. Avatar – $75.6
2. Sherlock Holmes – $62.4M
3. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel – $48.9M
4. It’s Complicated – $22.1M
5. The Blind Side – $11.5M
6. Up in the Air – $11.3M
7. The Princess and the Frog – $9M
8. Nine – $5.45M
9. Did You Hear About the Morgans? – $5M
10. Invictus – $4.04M

The second trailer for Inception hit the web today, and I still have no idea what this movie is about. You may have seen this before Sherlock Holmes in theaters this weekend. A lot of people are excited for this film, but I can’t wrap my head around it enough to want to see it. What do you think?


Watch the trailer below, courtesy of Firstshowing, or download it in HD from Apple.

Warner Brothers’ Inception, directed and written by Academy Award nominated Christopher Nolan, will release nationwide on July 16, 2010.

Mashable has collected a nice little list of 10 innovative ways augmented reality has been used for marketing. While many of the items on the list are for regular products like cars and feminine hygiene (no joke), but of course there are some examples of films using it, as we have shown before.


The two listed are the simulated Transformer helmet for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and the simulated Enterprise from this year’s Star Trek. Check out their example videos below:

While the list neglects other movie campaigns with augmented reality (District 9 and the G.I. Joe DVD cover come to mind first), the fact that two of the top 10 “awesome” uses are for movies is a good sign. Hopefully we’ll see the trend continue next year. My favorites on the list are the ones that actually let you play a real game, like the TOPPS one below: