How 'The Blair Witch Project' creates a campaign (Part 3)

The Blair Witch Project (TBWP) has one of the best viral marketing campaigns.
The main theme was to create uncertainty among the public and target audience. They started to hand out leaflets with pictures of people saying that they are missing. They also started rumours that a groups of students went missing here and there, creating the campaign through word of mouth, and spreading it so that more people can be interested and watch the movie. Additionally, they started to post things on online chat rooms to keep the word-of-mouth going, but online. This created more rumours.


Haxan Films, the production company built a website as part of their campaign for TBWP. the website was www.blairwitch.com which went online in 1998, just before the movie was released in 1999. The website shows the history of the Blair Witch from 1785 to when the movie was created in 1999. When they 'discovered footage' in October 1997, they released them to the families of the missing filmmakers. They then asked Haxan Films to piece together the story for them.
There is a section on the website with autobiographies from these students and photos and other materials of evidence which the police found when they were searching for the students.
There are also snippets of the film from the recovered tapes and Heather’s (one of the filmmaker students) journal. All of these increases the belief that it’s based on true events.

In addition to their website for their viral marketing, they shot a few trailers on low budget costs. This way they saved money. In one of the trailers (part 2 of this post) you hear Heather begging for forgiveness while she cries, and this gives a chilling and scary sense of feeling to the audience. The ads were mainly shown in college campuses. The team also tried to avoid cinema advertisements which saved their money and also made audiences believe that they had discovered this project by themselves. Also, in the opening weekend in July 1999, Artisan took out a full-page advert in 'Variety Magazine' which also featured TBWP website.

The publicity campaign for The Blair Witch Project was a successful campaign which was also scaring their target audience. It was one of the most creative campaigns in film history. One of the reasons for it's success was that it was the first film to be marketed online. This brings in web 2.0 where people can interact and engage in the production and teasers of the movie.
The pictures and interviews that they posted online created the fear that the movie was based on a true story.
The time this film was created was when fake documentaries didn't really exist, so it was new for people who didn't have a clue of what type of movie this would  be. This is another reason for its success; it created a feeling of uncertainty in their target audience. People did not know if this story was true, and if the project was real and if the people in the film actually existed. Also, back then it was difficult for people to check if the movie was real as they didn't have a developed web 2.0 whereas now they do, and people can find out easily if it was based on a real story or not.

How can I create a campaign for my product?
I could take the idea of a website and create one where fans / the target audience could try and solve murder mysteries and guess who the killer is. Games like this can also be introduced as part of a campaign, this way, people who play the game will want to watch the movie, increasing our viewers. Now that there is web 2.0, people can engage activities and interact online.