Days of the Viral Present

The movie watching experience has changed. Today, huge blockbusters are supported by major marketing budgets in order to create buzz and drive box office success. Blockbuster films, such as Nolan's Batman series and Prometheus, have employed digital and social media marketing to create major excitement in the online space. Not only has this trend resulted in awesome digital experiences, but they are also beginning to extend the story of a film beyond the confines of its running time by creating a serious amount of narrative depth. X-Men: Days of Future Past had a potent viral marketing campaign that has supported it to become the highest grossing X-Men film in history. 

Here are the key moments:

Trask Industries

In the post-credits scene in The Wolverine, we were given a standard marvel teaser of the upcoming X-Men: Days of the Future Past. But if you were watching closely, you would have noticed  there was a video playing on screens in the airport terminal. That video was an advertisement for Trask Industries, who would become the primary antagonists of Days of Future Past. While glimpsed briefly in The Wolverine, the advert was released, in full, online with an accompanying corporate website.  The video was watched 2,540,288 times.  

The Bent Bullet

The next phase of the viral marketing of X-Men: Days of The Future Past was an actual rewrite of history. Coming 3 days after the actual anniversary of JFK’s assassination, a conspiracy theory emerged online positing Erik Lensherr aka Magneto as JFK’s assassin. A viral video announced the theory, which was supported by reams of very factual looking evidence at thebentbullet.com.  The key take-out about this video is that it become a valuable plot point in the film itself, and plays a role in filling in the blanks between the events of X-Men: First Class and Days of the Future Past. The video received 1 610 006 views.

25 Moments

The final phase of Days of Future Past viral marketing was released 6 weeks before the release of the film. 25 Moments focused on the building the historical narrative of the universe in which the apocalyptic future becomes a reality. Combining modern historical events with X-Men cinematic continuity, this site is basically the prologue to X-Men: Days of the Future Past. It was accompanied by a YouTube video (as seen above), which received 406 000 views.

In Conclusion

The viral marketing for X-Men: Days of Future Past was superb in that not only did it create hype but it also enhanced the film itself without giving too much away about the story. Film studios have worked out how to use viral marketing in a coherent and long term way to build mass excitement for the film. The effectiveness of this approach can be seen in the fact that X-Men: Days of Future Past is now the highest grossing X-Men film ever. We are truly living in the days of the viral present. (see what i did there) 

P.S. Here’s a super cool Instagram teaser that was used to announce a forthcoming trailer reveal.