District 9 and the unravelling viral strategy

Posted by Ricardo | Filed under Viral Campaigns

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I haven’t seen District 9 yet, I haven’t followed the Alternate Reality Game (ARG), but something has been strucking me has odd: I’ve noticed that District 9 has been a trending topic on Twitter for several (many) days now.

Why is that strange? Well, from what I see, usually a trending topic doesn’t stay there for a long time. Check it out at http://twitter.com/.

But before we try to unravell their strategy, let me just say, for anyone who might not know it, that it’s a sci-fi film about the segregation of aliens in South Africa.

Now, why is it managing to stay that long on Twitter’s trending topics?

There can be several reasons, the main one being that the movie can be really good and it keeps people talking and recommending friends and famliy to go see it. That shows on its box office numbers also: with a budget of 30 million dollares (considered relatively small in Hollywood this days), in the 5 weeks since it opened in the US it already got 100 million dollares at the box office.

This is one thing people can never forget: you can have the best viral video in the world, but if the product doesn’t match, if the product is not good, then it won’t last, for sure.

And besides the chances of the movie being really good, they cut a very good trailers, which together had millions of views.

Also, contributing to this buzz, Distric 9 had an ARG going to prior to its release (check out the Wiki here http://d9.wikibruce.com/Home), and that got fans also talking to their friends and family and so on.

Then, although they had a first time feature director – Neill Blomkamp (but with several excellent short films) – it had the hand of Peter Jackson behind it, and that makes people notice, and talk about.

Of course, all of this makes people talk. And all that talk might just be happening on Twitter, thus the longstanding trending topics.

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