I am Legend Advertainment – iPhone, Second Life

Warner Brothers is jumping on the unconventional media bandwagon with the marketing of their new movie, I am Legend. Will Smith stars in what proves to be the umpteenth zombie horror adventure movie to take place in the last few years. In the movie, Smith apparently spends most of his time doing what any reasonable person would do in the same situation…running away from the people/things that want to eat him. Clichéd plot lines aside, Warner Brothers is doing things that are anything but trite with their actual marketing efforts.

First, they created a Section of their Web site dedicated solely to Apple iPhone users. This interactive mini site is actually pretty advanced, as I suppose it should be, seeing as how it is designed for one of the most advanced phones on the market right now. It comes complete with wallpaper and photos tailored to work for the iPhone, recent news about the movie, a full-length trailer, a brief synopsis of the movie, and a “Daylight Meter.” This little widget allows you to enter your zip code, and it then gives your geographic coordinates (based on latitude and longitude), and the amount of time left until daylight...because Will Smith has to hide from the zombies at night, get it? Does this little site serve a purpose? Not really, unless you are a special ops soldier (coordinates), or a vampire (daylight meter). Is it a clever way to use a new media? Yes. It is basically the new generation of a .mobi mobile Web site. As for whether or not setting up a mobile Web site for a specific brand of phone will catch on, this is a bit hard to predict. However, in my opinion, it seems as though this may be a bit limiting, due to the fact that it can only be reached by those with an iPhone; it makes more sense to me to simply set up a mobile Web site compatible with any internet-ready phone.

The second part of Warner Bros. outside-of-the-box thinking for marketing I am Legend is through yet another remotely untapped medium- Second Life. This part of their untraditional marketing efforts is truly the brain child of their operations. Warner Bros. has set up the “I am Legend Second Life Survival Game,” in which residents of the virtual world can play as a human or as one of the zombies. Either way, the main object of the game is to find the cure to the virus that spurred this crazy zombie outbreak. Now, if you ask me, this is good marketing. And it is so clever on Warner Brothers’ part, especially from a strategic management perspective. Instead of creating their own high-tech advergame to market this movie, they used a platform (or medium, what have you) that already exists…thus cutting back significantly on their costs of development and production…and also tapping into an already enormous consumer-base. In fact, as of this post, there at 10,255,064 users on Second Life, check out how many there are right now (as you are reading this post) Here. They have essentially created an advergame within a game. Well played, Warner Brothers.



So, the post-blog post kudos for this entry goes first to Angela Natividad over at Adrants, for posting This Article, which brought the I am Legend advertainment news to my attention, and second to MarketingVox for posting This Article, which supplemented the other things that I found elsewhere.