MovieViral.com – How to ruin a viral (Part 2)
District 9 has a very versatile viral campaign encompassing two opposing forces, four websites, and the social networking world. Despite all this, many have complained about the viral not living up to it’s potential. Sure, all the pieces are in place, but Sony isn’t playing the game correctly. For instance, they went over 6 months without updating ANY of their viral sites. They set up this vast viral world and then abandon it for half a year. Maybe it was the economy, maybe they thought they started too soon, who knows. What matters is, people weren’t happy.
Even when they start their viral campaign back up, Sony can’t win. Sony created a Twitter account on May 11th for the site mnuspreadslies.com. Seems reasonable enough, except that the name for the account holder was ‘Christopher’. The main alien behind the site was named George, so at first I, like many, though Christopher was another staff member (aka an alien) for the site. But as the weeks followed and Christopher tweeted more, it became clear that he was claiming to write blog posts on the site that had George as the author. Then Sony suddenly changed the author on all the posts to Christopher, likely as a way to cover their tracks, but they forgot something…to change the actual posts. Within many of the posts, the author would sign off as George, and that name is still there.
The obvious explanation is that Sony has just f*cked up and are poor at covering their tracks. However, there are still questions. Why did Sony change the name? Are they really that careless? One, albeit far-off, explanation is that this is actually part of the viral. Somehow, Multi-National United has planted this “Christopher” to replace George, as a spy or something. It could even be a Marcus Wright (Terminator Salvation) scenario. This seems highly unlikely, as there hasn’t even been a whiff of a hint that this is the case. Just seems like reaching to stay oblivious to the obvious truth: Sony messed up.
District 9 releases August 14th. See MovieViral.com’s District 9 page for more details.
Written by Dan Koelsch, Managing Editor - MovieViral.com . Posted by Nick Butler. New to the site? Check out the What is D-9 page. Register at the District 9 News forum, which is located at www.MovieViral.com/forum. Follow us on Twitter and subscribe to our YouTube Channel.
I don’t care.
Does anyone know when will it be released in Spain? I can’t be on August 14th because that’s when companies have planned to release Up and other major summer movies here (aarrgh, I need to the Up NOW!), so this could be one of those sceneraios when the release of a small movie here is delayed over and over…
Sony’s dumb, but I doubt they are that dumb.In fact, I don’t think they are dumb enough to mess up a marketing campaign like this one. In the “MNU Spreads Lies” blog the alien named Christopher mentions that he has been taken in by the MNU and is being questioned. Maybe it all contributes to the movie. Or maybe, just maybe, Sony IS that dumb.
I doubt Sony makes a mistake like that. Especially when you have to take into consider that it’s not Sony that is responsible for the viralling in the end, it’s the team behind the movie that plans a viral campaign, to support the film.
Also, it contributes to the MNU Spreads Lies part, because it would mean MNU alters information when convenient. It could all be part of the movie story.
My money is on Sony or the Marketing firm making a mistake and covering it up. If MNU had take over mnuspreadslies.com why would they give us the code for a target in the shape of a non-human? Why wouldn’t they start to make him seem to start accepting MNU as good? Why would they continue to incriminate themselves as evil when they are a corporation with an image to maintain? If MNU is as manipulative as we all believe they are they would slowly weed out all the negative parts of MNU or just shut the site down entirely in an effort to suppress dissent. The first rule in population control is to not let any opinions other than yours reach the eyes or ears of the people.