Viral

Screencap of Chuai Station, from a video part of the Viral

The Viral is an online marketing campaign that was part of the promotion for the film Cloverfield.

Information

Puzzle websites containing Lovecraftian elements, such as Ethan Haas Was Right, were originally reported to be connected to the film. On July 9, 2007, producer J. J. Abrams stated that, while a number of websites were being developed to market the film, the only official site that had been found was 1-18-08.com. At the site, a collection of time-coded photos are provided to visitors to piece together a series of events and interpret their meanings; the pictures can also be flipped over – by repeatedly and rapidly moving the mouse side to side. Eventually, www.cloverfieldmovie.com was created.

This was the actual site where a trailer was shown and it gives you the number 33287 to text cloverfield to on your mobile phone for a ringtone of the monster's roar and a wallpaper of a decimated Manhattan. This eventually turns out to be a Paramount number (people later receive material on Iron Man, Indiana Jones 4, Kung fu Panda and The Love Guru).

As part of the viral marketing campaign, the drink Slusho! has served as a tie-in. The drink had already appeared in producer Abrams' previous creation, Alias. Viral websites for Slusho! and a Japanese drilling company named Tagruato (タグルアト, Taguruato) were launched to add to the mythology of Cloverfield. When Cloverfield was hosted at Comic-Con 2007, gray Slusho! T-shirts were distributed to attendees. Fans who had registered at the Slusho! website for Cloverfield received e-mails of fictional sonar images before the film's release that showed a deep-sea creature heading toward Manhattan.

Producer Bryan Burk explained the viral tie-in, "[It] was all done in conjunction with the studio... The whole experience in making this movie is very reminiscent [of] how we did Lost." Director Matt Reeves described Slusho! as "part of the involved connectivity" with Abrams' Alias and that the drink represented a "meta-story" for Cloverfield. The director explained, "It's almost like tentacles that grow out of the film and lead, also, to the ideas in the film.

And there's this weird way where you can go see the movie and it's one experience... But there's also this other place where you can get engaged where there's this other sort of aspect for all those people who are into that. [...] All the stories kind of bounce off one another and inform each other. But, at the end of the day, this movie stands on its own to be a movie. [...] The Internet sort of stories and connections and clues are, in a way, a prism and they're another way of looking at the same thing. To us, it's just another exciting aspect of the storytelling."

External Links

• 1-18-08.com
• Slusho.jp
• Tagruato.jp
• jamieandteddy.com
• Missing Teddy Hanssen
• Viral Marketing - Wikipeda page