Alter­nate Real­ity Brand­ing have a page and three videos sur­mis­ing 42 Entertainment’s 2008 activ­i­ties, specif­i­cally the Dark Knight Why So Seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing campaign.

High­lights include over 10M unique par­tic­i­pants across 75 dif­fer­ent coun­tries through ‘even­tiz­ing’ the web, for instance the use of cell phones ring­ing from within cakes in Bak­ery stores. All in all it kept The Dark Knight in the news and alive and well on the inter­net for over a year, lead­ing up to the July ’08 release.

Cam­paign Overview Video

Comic-con Event Video

Har­vey Dent cam­paign video

Found via /Film and FSR

The own­ers of the assorted Joker phones have received a new phone call, with a mon­tage of mum­bled sounds and clips with phrases such as “Is any­body there? Please help” and “Don’t do it, don’t do it”, together with the sounds of the Gotham PD in the back­ground before end­ing with the Joker’s mani­a­cal laugh.

Down­load audio of the call

Coin­cid­ing with this phone call, the lat­est episode of Gotham Tonight has been added to GCN, the episode is set to inter­view Har­vey Dent, the “White Knight”, how­ever half way through it cuts to news of The Joker’s bank robbery.

Cel­e­brated jour­nal­ist Mike Engel sits down with the “White Knight” of Gotham City — Dis­trict Attor­ney Har­vey Dent. Dent defends con­tro­ver­sial crime-fighter Bat­man, and says they’ve “ben­e­fited the entire city.”

Dent takes calls from view­ers on Jonathan Crane and fears of a new out­break of Fear Toxin, and con­fronts a GPD police offi­cer angry over Dent’s pros­e­cu­tion of cor­rupt cops. And Engel asks the ques­tions everybody’s been talk­ing about — is Har­vey Dent dat­ing Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Rachel Dawes? The episode ends with the break­ing news that the Gotham National Bank has been hit by rob­bers who made away with 68 mil­lion dol­lars from the vault.

The WSS Over­ture count­down has ended, and with it the Joker has brought down his mad­ness upon all of the Gotham City viral web­sites, splat­ter­ing them with flood and defac­ing them with mis­chie­vous messages.

On each of these pages a puz­zle piece with a let­ter was left, com­bin­ing all the pieces the phrase “Kick­ing and Screen­ing” can be found, which leads to the next Why So Seri­ous page,

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​k​i​c​k​i​n​g​a​n​d​s​c​r​e​e​n​i​ng/

Note the play on words, “Screen­ing” — the prize — Free tick­ets to an IMAX pre-release Dark Knight screen­ing on July 15th!. As quickly as they appeared they have now SOLD OUT.

AND HERE WE GO!!!

“You’ve played your part, here are your just rewards. Meet at the ren­de­vous points below. Don’t be late, don’t for­get your ticket or heads will roll. Casual attire, smiles optional.”

Sold Out Chicago, Cin­e­mark IMAX (Woodridge) 9:30pm
Sold Out New York, Pal­isades IMAX (West Nyack) 9:00pm
Sold Out Edmon­ton, Sil­ver City IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Pitts­burg, Cin­e­mark IMAX (Tar­en­tum) 9:30pm
Sold Out Kansas City, Stu­dio IMAX (Olathe) 9:00pm
Sold Out Phoenix, Deer Val­ley IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out San Fran­cisco, Metreon IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out Los Ange­les, Uni­ver­sal City IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out Las Vegas, Palms IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Min­neapo­lis, Met­ro­pol­i­tan IMAX (St. Michael) 9:30pm
Sold Out Dal­las, Cin­e­mark IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Toronto, Sco­tia­bank IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Salt Lake City, Jor­dan Com­mons IMAX (Sandy) 9:30pm
Sold Out Grand Rapids, Cel­e­bra­tion IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Atlanta, Mall of Geor­gia IMAX (Buford) 9:45pm
Sold Out Den­ver, Col­orado Cen­ter IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Hous­ton, Marq*e IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Orlando, Pointe IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Port­land, Bridge­port IMAX (Tigard) 9:45pm
Sold Out San Diego, Mira Mesa IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Omaha, Star IMAX (Coun­cil Bluffs) 9:30pm
Sold Out Indi­anapo­lis, Show­place IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Boston, Com­cast IMAX (Nat­ick) 7:00pm
Sold Out Seat­tle, Boe­ing IMAX 7:30pm

An email was also sent out shortly before­hand via Human Resources:

http://​www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​k​i​c​k​i​n​g​a​n​d​s​c​r​e​e​n​ing HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA ha HA ha HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha HA ha

Thanks to every­one that sent this in! Hope you got your tick­ets in time! (We poor brits miss out again it seems — we’re get­ting the movie a week later anyway).

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The Bat­man Begins lim­ited edi­tion DVD set has been mak­ing its way to the first pur­chasers, and with it comes some more viral mar­ket­ing clues for us to drool over.

On the small USB don­gle that comes with the gift set, which con­tains a num­ber of pro­duc­tion images, etc, there is a plaque pay­ing ref­er­ence to the Gotham His­toric Trust. There is also a pay­ing in slip for the Gotham National Bank with user­name and pass­word scrib­bled on.

Gotham National Bank

# User­name: gnb3792
# Pass­word: 99g28ct75k

Head­ing to the GNB admin page, www​.gotham​na​tion​al​bank​.com/​A​d​min, as of July 8th, there is a web­mail login box.

Gotham His­toric Trust

Call­ing the num­ber, 1866 241 1150 as listed on the plaque returns the auto­mated message:

Thank you for call­ing the Gotham His­toric Trust. Nobody can answer your call right now, but you are wel­come to visit our web­site at www gothamhis­toric­trust dot com where you can find our cur­rent hours of oper­a­tion, infor­ma­tion and online exhibits of Gotham City in days gone by. Thank you for calling.

An update to the Gotham National Bank also men­tions the trust:

Gotham National Bank down­town is proud to be on the Gotham reg­is­ter of His­toric Build­ings. The main branch of Gotham National Bank was orig­i­nally the old 1st Gotham Bank. In 1934, it was sold when the bank closed. The build­ing passed through many hands in the inter­ven­ing years and was vacant when it was pur­chased by Gotham National Bank. After sev­eral years of restora­tion under the over­sight of the Gotham His­toric Trust, the bank was restored and proudly re-opened its doors at 9:00 am on March 7, 1985.

This leads us to www​.gothamhis​toric​trust​.com

Thanks Pierre!

Fic­tional CFB forum mem­ber, BriDog72 has posted a video pro­mot­ing Cit­i­zens for Bat­man onto YouTube,

“I believe in Bat­man” — “I am a cit­i­zen for Bat­man“
July 8th.

Thanks Pierre.

A new mes­sage was posted to the mains and pub­lic forums of Cit­i­zens for Bat­man today,

Poster: BriDog72 — Thurs­day, July 3rd, 2008 at 00:12
Seems there’s been a bit of a slipup with the project me and Batfan73 have been work­ing on. BatFan’s in jail and I need everyone’s help. He left me a voice­mail, it was kinda gar­bled, but he said he was picked up by the cops for tres­pass­ing, so he needs some help get­ting every­thing acti­vated. He’s not sure when he’s going to be able to extract him­self from his sit­u­a­tion.
He said he needs some­one to get some sort of key off of an invoice, num­ber 38272899 (geez, I hope I copied that down right), but he got cut off before he could tell me what this invoice is or even where to find it. We need this key to acti­vate every­thing.
Can any­one fig­ure this out? We’re going to need to fix this or the whole thing’s ruined! Anyone?

In an email to Glenn Barhyte, Jim Gor­don made ref­er­ence to Maroni Imports, lead­ing us to a new viral site, www​.maroni​im​ports​.com

With the invoice num­ber from the forums post and the sruname “Cras­ton”, which appeared in a small news update to the Gotham City Rail website:

ALERT: The STCS will undergo ini­tial fine-tuning of its soft­ware on the evening of July 8th. This rou­tine main­te­nance may result in tem­po­rary inter­mit­tent sys­tem delays. We apol­o­gize for any incon­ve­nience this may cause. — C. Cras­ton, Sr. Elec. Engi­neer, GCR

With this infor­ma­tion the afore­men­tioned invoice can be down­loaded, at the bot­tom of it there is a key for a sig­nal booster, Key: 5D45C08AA6C3638D7829C0D5183FDB14B0CDBF1DCB12. With this key, the sig­nal booster was acti­vated and CFB was updated to show two sets of co-ordinates in New York and Chicago. Hence the two loca­tions for the big event this July 8th are now known:

New York and Chicago

CFB has since been updated to include a new mis­sion statement:

Some­times, you have to take a stand. You have to fight for respect. You have to let the entire world know you’re here.
On July 8th, nobody will be able to ignore us. Gather at the above coor­di­nates at the appointed time, and help us take a stand in sup­port of Bat­man!
If you can’t join us on the ground, we’ll be pro­vid­ing a way for you to watch what goes down, live on this web­site.
Defend Gotham! Defend Bat­man!
Key: 5D45C08AA6C3638D7829C0D5183FDB14B0CDBF1DCB12
Sig­nal Booster sta­tus: ON

Thanks Pierre!

Read the rest of this entry »

The clues from the lat­est Why So Seri­ous viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign have led us to the stu­pid bats page con­tain­ing a brand new Dark Knight poster made up of Joker cards and scratched Joker ramblings:

A new Viral chal­lenge has been unveiled at whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​p​e​r​a​t​or/ through a new text from the Joker:

Wake up, clown! You have *one hour* to reply to be a part of today’s fun. /operator

Fol­low­ing a reply, this was sent:

Good. Do not reply again. I’ll be in touch…

After the hour dead­line, par­tic­i­pants were sent code words:

Work together, clowns. Your code-word: XXXXXXXX. Your part­ner: XXX-XXX-XXXX. Do NOT call until told to. Do not pub­li­cize this number.

Wait for a call — you will receive one or more code words. Relay these words to your partner.

You’re the first in the chain. Call your part­ner and relay your code-word NOW.

When all “relays” were com­pleted, all five chains had dropped and five words are shown, these all have the word “house” in com­mon, enter­ing that into the box reveals a new game, “Punk Drop”.

Thanks Pierre!