A campaign ahead of its time

A game changer for movie promotion

The Blair Witch Project was certainly neither the first nor the only horror movie that
presented itself as a true story, but the special thing that helped a $60000 movie like it to earn
nearly $250 million at the box office was its revolutionary promotion campaign (IMDb n.d.).

Half a year before the film premiere in 1998, the website http://www.blairwitch.com had
been launched to introduce the background story: In 1994, three students went missing while
trying to make a documentary about a legend involving witches known as the Blair Witch. A
year later, their audio tapes and videos were found and pieced together to produce the film.

Figure 1. Reproduced from: blairwitch.com n.d.

Updated information like interviews, images from the place where the students were said
to disappear, etc. was uploaded on the website. Meanwhile, the students were still claimed to be
missing.
 Figure 2. Reproduced from: blairwitch.com n.d.

In Sundance, where the movie premiered, missing-persons flyers were handed out (Rose
2019). The story went viral both online and offline.

Figure 3. Reproduced from: Rose 2019

The main point of the whole campaign was spreading fake news about the missing
students. The Blair Witch Project was not presented as a professional made movie, but as a
documentary edited from the found footage. Additionally, the trailer was simple. It only showed
some cut scenes from the footage and left everything else for viewers to imagine, then led back
to the website (Armitage 2014). By the time the movie began showing in cinemas in July 1999,
its story had been widely talked about on the internet as well as on newspapers and TV reports
(Lamble 2016).

A campaign that blurred the line between reality and fiction

There were many reasons for the success of the Blair Witch Project campaign – timing,
contents and the approach. They effectively applied viral communication strategies, which
Welker (2002) defined as "strategies that allow an easier, accelerated, and cost reduced [sic]
transmission of messages by creating environments for a self-replicating, exponentially
increasing diffusion, spiritualization, and impact of the message".

The first reason was timing – it was the early days of the internet. It was the first film that
was widely marketed online. In the 90s, internet surfing was quite new. It was difficult to verify
the information since the sources and tools are limited. The Blair Witch Project campaign took
advantage of it and spread the news as if it was real. At that time, chat rooms and online forums
were popular. The people creating this campaign started seeding on those forums by pretending
to be typical online users, bringing up the film topic and intriguing fellow chatters. They shared
missing person photos and linked back to the website (Armitage 2014).

Secondly, the contents on the website were attractive to the audience. The Blair Witch
Project website has a homemade concept, which looked like the students really created it. Instead
of promoting the movie, the information on the website focused on the myth, explained in details
with photos and clips as evidence. The website was continuously updated with new information
as if the case was still going on. The website was introduced 6 months before the movie
premiere, which makes the movie seemed like a documentary instead of a directed film.

Finally, its approach evoked audience’s curiosity and got them involved in promoting the
storyline through word-of-mouth. Haxan Film – the film maker introduced themselves as a film
company hired by the missing students’ families to edit the found footage and investigate the
events (Bereznak 2019). People talked about the story on forums and discussed everything with
their friends. They decided to see the movie in order to find out more about the myth as well as
the information about the missing people.

The key element that made this campaign successful is that the producers were able to
blur the line between fiction and reality. They did not sell the movie, they sold the story. Another
important factor is that it was original, it was different and outstanding from everything in its
time.

Would it work in modern days?

The Blair Witch Project campaign was revolutionary in its time. The people who created
this campaign saw the opportunity of viral marketing and the potential of the internet. They
created something new and unique. They used multiple platforms to carefully build up a big
story that made people think it was real. Their campaign inspired several other movies such as
The Dark Knight, Europa Report, Cloverfield, Paranomal Activity, The Witch, etc. (Prasidis
2016).

However, a key to the success of The Blair Witch Project is the time when the internet
was still new. I believe if the campaign were run nowadays, it would not have been as effective
since there are too many things going on on the internet that can distract people from the story.
Additionally, there are lots of sources and tools to help viewers to verify the story. It might still
interest horror movie lovers, but the impact would not be as strong. What made it successful, as
mentioned, was because the idea was original, different and outstanding from everything else,
and in modern days, that is more difficult to achieve.

In my opinion, with the development of the internet, viral campaigns have more chances
and channels to spread the words, such as on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, but
there is also more competition, and the standards are higher. For instance, seeding on the internet
in 1999 might be new, but it has become a common way many businesses apply everyday now.

From my point of view, the scenario in Vietnam is not an exception. If The Blair Witch
Project campaign were run here in earlier years, it would have been huge, but if it were run here
now, the contents need to be more creative in order to get the viewers’ attention. Furthermore,
back then, creating the website was a new thing, but it is familiar now, so the campaign needs
more innovative approaches along with the original contents for viral communication. My
recommendations for the campaign is to use interactive virtual games or spaces relating to the
storyline – applying new intersting technology that are not common to the marjority of the
population is a good way to attract attention.

To conclude, The Blair Witch campaign cannot be applied in the exact same way, but
many lessons can still be drawn from it, like taking advantage of new things and being creative
to get the audience involved in the process of word spreading.

References
Armitage, T. (2014). Blair Witch Project – Still the Greatest Marketing Campaign After 15
Years. [online] Site-Seeker. Available at: https://www.site-seeker.com/blair-witch-project-
still-greatest-marketing-campaign-15-years/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].

Bereznak, A. (2019). How ‘Blair Witch’ Became a Horror Sensation—and Invented Modern

Movie Marketing. [online] The Ringer. Available at:
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2019/3/28/18280988/blair-witch-movie-marketing-1999
[Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].

Blairwitch.com. (n.d.). The Blair Witch Project. [online] Available at:

http://www.blairwitch.com/project/ [Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].

IMDb. (n.d.). The Blair Witch Project (1999) - IMDb. [online] Available at:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0185937/trivia [Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].

Lamble, R. (2016). Blair Witch and the rise of viral movie marketing. [online] Den of Geek.
Available at: https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/viral-marketing/28368/blair-witch-and-
the-rise-of-viral-movie-marketing [Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].

Prasidis, T. (2016). 15 Movies Inspired By The Blair Witch Project. [online] ScreenRant.
Available at: https://screenrant.com/movies-inspired-by-blair-witch-project/ [Accessed 22
Jul. 2019].

Rose, S. (2019). How The Blair Witch Project changed horror for ever. [online] the Guardian.
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/apr/08/how-the-blair-witch-project-
changed-horror-for-ever [Accessed 22 Jul. 2019].
Welker, C. (2002). The paradigm of Viral Communication. Information Services & Use, 22(1),
pp.3-8.