I have chosen to investigate a recent highly popular campaign. It was special because it connected different media to create something that intrigued people and got a lot of people talking. I am looking at Lost's season 2 advertising campaign.
The nature of the television show Lost is one of cliffhangers, hidden themes and withheld information. This causes it to be addictive because people are always wanting to find out more about the show's themes and narrative. Knowing this, the creators of the series decided to do something new and interesting, give them the option to do this, but not by using the actual television show.
Background of Lost
The show is the result of collaboration between ABC Studio's Damon Lindelof, J. J. Abrams and Jeffrey Lieber. The concept of the show itself is a mix of ideas taken from both book, television and video games. The main influences were from the book Lord of the Flies, the television show Survivor and the video game Myst. It became one of the most expensive television shows to create, causing one of the executives at ABC Studios to be fired because of the risk.
Who commissioned the campaign?
ABC Studios commissioned this work to promote their shows above other television network's shows.
The Hanso Foundation Campaign
The series has never shied away from having a big budget and this side-campaign for the show stayed true to this. It started by showing adverts on television. The first one advertised a rather vague foundation's website to go to. Strangely, there was not even a hint that it was to do with the television program Lost. Even if you were inclined enough to visit it online, the actual website at first glance didn't seem to tie in to the television program. This I find is a rather strange tactic. To advertise a foundation in the hope that some people will be curious enough to visit their website and then explore it enough to realise that it is a television-show tie in seems quite risky. However, people did do this and were very excited that they had found something out to do with the television show that they immediately started telling everybody who was interested in the show. This created quite a buzz because suddenly everybody was on the fake foundation's websites looking for clues about the show.
Soon to follow was another television advert with a phone number to the foundation. This provided another medium for fans of the show to get information.
The site and campaign was constantly updated, adding new sections, new puzzles, new characters and themes, keeping the Lost fan base alert for new information that could emerge any time. This kept the campaign held in people's discussion for a long time.
The Campaign - Television Adverts
The Television adverts were very short, vague but had powerful themes throughout. For example, in this advert, powerful images move around the screen. These show the ideas of science, architecture, genetics, space travel and religion. However, it also very briefly zooms in on a sinister looking man, overlooking the world. It would be easy to not notice this as it is not very clear and the images are much brighter and attention-grabbing than the dark figure. However, it is a very unsettling image and certain people would feel compelled to look into this organisation a little.
The Campaign - First Website
This was the website that existed before the television campaign began. It was very dull with no extra information for people to discover. I imagine that this was not to draw attention to it. The Hanso Foundation logo appeared a few times on things during the first season of Lost so it is obvious that this website had been planned from the start of the series.
The Campaign - Second Website
This was the second version of the website, relaunched to coincide with the television campaign prompting visitors to go there. This was the main website for the campaign. It used web technologies such as flash, video and streaming audio to create a game for its visitors. On first glance it's just a regular fancy website for a company that has lots of money to make one with. However, when exploring it you can find secret links to new pages, pages that require puzzles to be solved and passworded pages with passwords that can be worked out from watching the show. It is highly unusual to have such a big scale show reveal clues about an Internet game. This website has its own themes such as the projects that the foundation does, the people and also its opposition. The page is frequently attacked by a fictional hacker revealing a different perspective to the website and questioning the foundation's motives. This adds a whole new depth to the user's experience as it puts them somewhere between the foundation and the hacker, searching for information.
The Campaign - Current Website (27/04/08)
The current website seems to show the end of the Internet side of the campaign with a final page displaying an ending letter by the foundation's leader. However, even within this, there is a secret word you can click to display a haunting, unsettling video loop. This suggests that this isn't the end because even with this apparent 'conclusion' to the campaign, there are secrets within it.
What was the Brief?
What is the problem to be solved?
The campaign was needed to promote a new incredibly expensive television series that was a very high-risk project. The television show was hoping to be a cult-hit with a variety of themes including religion, mysticism, horror, science and philosophy. The campaign needed to tie into these themes and create more excitement about the show.
What is the solution going to be?
The solution would be to use a mixture of advertising techniques to draw more attention from the audience building up the shows reputation. This would then advertise the show further by word of mouth.
How will the solution be implemented?
The solution would have a main focal point, a website. The website would tie in with some of the show's themes.
The website would make the user want to find out more information.
The website should hold the user's interest through the duration of the television show which was to be screened at the same time as the website was active.
Who is the target audience?
The target audience is existing fans of the show. They have to be existing fans of the show or they will not understand the references to it on the website. Indirectly, this will cause a lot of discussion interesting new potential viewers and causing further excitement for the existing fans. The existing fans are interested in themes like science, philosophy, religion and technology so it is likely that they will be aged between 14-60 and mostly computer literate.
Over what time scale is the campaign going to be active?
The web campaign should keep users interested whilst the show is being aired on television. To do this, new parts of the campaign should be added over the time scale. This could be done by getting user's to use information from the television show to unlock new parts of the website. To add further interest, the website should have a fictional hacker that strikes occasionally giving the user a different perspective.
Where will the campaign be located?
The campaign will stretch across several areas. These include television shows, television advertisements, call centers and on the Internet.
How will the campaign be executed?
There will need to be communication with the show's scriptwriters to create a fictional foundation and storyline for the website to follow.
There will need to be discussion with set managers so that hints for the website are shown on the television show.
Call centers need to be set up worldwide to allow people to phone the fictional Hanso foundation.
There will need to be a script of when and how the website will update.
Conclusion
This campaign was interesting because it used a tactic that is very rarely used. Sure, interactive tie-in websites aren't all that uncommon but the way that this one is executed is very unexpected. A 'secret' advertisement campaign? In theory it should completely fail but because the creator's new the audience on such a personal level, it completely worked. I think that it's important to learn from this campaign that it's ok to break the rules of advertising and to go with what you feel will work for the product.
