Not only is viral marketing on the rise of late, it is also one of the most creative and well thought out marketing campaigns to date. And now the new movie District 9, directed by Peter Jackson, is taking on this viral marketing adventure throwing you in their world of alien tolerance and rights.

The most infamous viral marketing for a film, in my opinion and I’m sure others could agree, would have to be what 42 Entertainment created for the film ‘The Dark Knight.’  They had a slew of events, on-line games, and adventures you could do through the web and off. This campaign lead to a bombardment of fun websites that would put you into the Gotham City world making you think these places were real. The websites did not start until two years after ‘Batman Begins’ premiered and would not hit it off until IBelieveInHarveyDent.com appeared; WhySoSerious.com would appear a month later. These websites would only spark the fire that would be this amazing campaign that would engulf you in the world of the characters of Harvey Dent, actually campaigning for him to be District Attorney, and The Joker, parading around doing crazy tasks, becoming a clown, and games that would eventually culminate to the beginning of the movie. This timeline of events of the campaign took over a course of a year to promote this movie and is probably one of the most successful marketing campaigns ever, since ‘The Dark Knight’ did smash box office records.

Transformers also had its little stint of websites and passwords that would lead you to “secret” Sector 7 websites. Sector 7 was also driving around in a giant black semi showing  a short two minute clip of the movie to show off “NBE” activity.

The new movie,’District 9,’ has gone in the same direction as the 42 Entertainment campign for ‘The Dark Knight.’ They are going in two directions of humans vs. aliens. As shown above there is a humans rights group called Multi-National United who are very intolerant of the new visitors. The official website site of D9 is very interactive and keeps with the story of their campaign and movie.; this website also has the official trailer. But there is also a protest group called MNU spreads lies. This group is dedicated to protesting MNU and fighting for non-human rights. This brilliant campaign is obviously getting results and fans are loving the involvement as well:

As you can tell, viral marketing is here to stay and hopefully many more films follow in the footsteps of these great campaigns. Nothing says positive results as actual fan involvement.……