Fan Made Campaign To The Extreme

More than a few times on this site I have written about fan made viral marketing pieces. They have ranged from blatantly fan made to almost better than the professionals, but I have never seen a fan made campaign quite like this one. A month or two back, a site popped up that was obviously for the upcoming film "The Hunger Games." the sight had you sign up for 'tesserae' - in the book, each person under a certain age (18 I believe) is automatically entered into the drawing to pick the boy and girl tribute for each district. It didn't matter what kind of person you were, if you were under that age you were automatically entered. However, if you wanted to get some food from the capitol just to help your family survive, you could apply for tesserae which basically means more entries for your name, thus increasing the chances of you getting picked. So, this website has you give your information to sign up.

Once you signed up, you were sent an email from the district that you were assigned to - I was assigned to district 12, the home of the stars of the movie. The email came directly from the mayor himself:

That website then lead to another website, with a countdown clock, saying "see you in October." it seemed like the start of a very promising viral marketing campaign, but then the stuff hit the fan. Lionsgate contacted Movie Viral, which had originally been the first site to break the story, and told them that no viral marketing for the film had started - this was not an official marketing campaign. Movie Viral removed the story that they had posted and wrote a quick retraction article, apologizing for anyone that gave their personal information to the campaign. Then the creators of the campaign came out and, in an incredibly ballsy move, told Lionsgate that they had a very extensive campaign planned and that they should partner together to market the film. Lionsgate turned their offer down, and then nothing was heard from them for about a month and a half.

Then, on August 2nd, I got this email from the gamemakers:

At the bottom of the email was a brand new disclaimer, explaining that this is in fact a fan made viral marketing campaign. I guess Lionsgate didn't want to work with them.

Then, last Wednesday, I received a text message from the villain of the story himself, President Snow:

And again, he texted me on Sunday. I wonder what plan he has?

I know that this is fan made. But the fact that I have to keep reminding myself that simply means that it is the best fan made campaign I have ever seen. If Lionsgate didn't want to work with them, they better have something more fantastic up their sleeves. Otherwise, they are going to look foolish, because everyone is going to follow this massively impressive campaign. Stay tuned!