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 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).

Read the rest of this entry »

After com­plet­ing the lat­est Bam­boo­zle puz­zle, the next WSS page was revealed,

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​b​a​m​b​o​o​z​l​e​/​2​l​4​3​k​j​s​a​8​9​2​n​n​2​.​htm

With an Exit sign, we see our way out of The Joker’s cir­cus tent, click­ing the image causes a set of tick­ets to appear, each with a logo and the text “Redeem at exit”. Click­ing the four tick­ets that were returned as prizes to the indi­vid­ual flash games we’ve seen in the last few weeks leads us to the Over­ture, where some dyna­mite awaits us with a timer:

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​o​v​e​r​t​ure

A new Joker text has spawned the hunt for the next WSS viral web­site, Bruce was sent this ver­sion of the message:

OK clown, I see one last test of skill in your future. Post this where every­one can see it: BABEL

Oth­ers received these words — LAM, BOB, BLAM, ZEAL, BABEL, ZOOM, ME, MAZE, LAB, AMBLE

Which leads us to the “Bam­boo­zle” page: www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​b​a​m​b​o​o​zle

Here we see a for­tune telling machine, (much like that creepy one in the Tom Hanks movie “Big”).

Click­ing each of the but­tons reveals tick­ets with some for­tune and an extra taped on mes­sage from The Joker.

Top left
You will get your heart’s desire. Too bad you’re an addict.
You will come to the atten­tion of peo­ple in high places. Like crazed hill­top snipers.
You will live in inter­est­ing times. Inter­est­ing to his­to­ri­ans. Like the Black Plague.
You will meet some­one tall, dark and hand­some who you will share your life with. They’ll route your bank funds into an untrace­able Car­ribbean account.
You will come into great wealth. After an indus­trial acci­dent. You’ll be blind. Deaf. Com­pletely par­a­lyzed. But rich.
Now would be a good time to leave your job. Twenty years flip­ping burg­ers is long enough.

Bot­tom left

Chil­dren will influ­ence a major deci­sion. Who knows. You might have mar­ried her any­way.
You will have a break­through in your career. Your boss will take credit.
You will have an oppor­tu­nity for a good invest­ment. House of Pies stock is shoot­ing up.
Don’t assume you know what is going on at work. But yes, there are pho­tos. And yes, they will stand up in court.
You will make money, if not for you, then for an orga­ni­za­tion. Like the IRS.
You will unex­pect­edly need help today, and the response of friends will sur­prise you. They’ll take video. Send it to your boss. Your wife. It’ll go viral.

Top right

Money is head­ing your way. But you’re a mov­ing tar­get. Too bad.
Expect a pro­mo­tion. Expect it to be humil­i­at­ing.
You will soon receive a gift If your lawyer calls and says don’t answer the door, there’s a rea­son.
You can expect an inher­i­tance. One of those genetic things that pre­dict a short and mis­er­able life. It will also explain why your ears look like that.
Some­one who cur­rently doubt is telling the truth Say­ing you are the prophet of a new reli­gion won’t help. The voices were wrong. They weren’t free sam­ples.
Beware of false infor­ma­tion regard­ing a loved one. But that thing about the affair? That’s true. Sorry.

Bot­tom right

Beware of unex­pected wind­falls. Veg­ans are espe­cially flat­uent.
A new per­son will enter your life. Your cell­mate. The voices will tell him you’re a demon.
An acquan­taince will approach you with a busi­ness offer. Any­one stu­pid enough to use a fortune-telling machine will think it’s a great offer. You prob­a­bly date a pagan.
A small kind­ness will lead to unex­pected ben­e­fits. After sev­eral thou­sand dol­lars, things will mostly be okay. Just give up and throw out your mat­tress.
Can­cel the trip you planned this week Take the trip-dysentery. Stay home-salmonella. Either way you lose weight.
Your star is climb­ing. You’ll be a celebrity. The Dar­win awards are a kind of fame.

14 of these clues have cutouts:

The name of the for­tune teller is “Epyt­tnelis” which is “Silent­Type” back­wards — the name of a SHH forum mem­ber that com­piled an over­all Gotham City map given the snip­pets seen across the viral sites. Using this map and a co-ordinate sys­tem cor­re­spond­ing to the num­bers in the cor­ners of the tick­ets, the tick­ets cover two squares with the cut outs in each of the 14 giv­ing num­bers of a street. Apply­ing these in the order that the tick­ets can be retrieved we get a sequence of num­bers — hit­ting the but­tons in this order (22 1 5 3 4 17 14) reveals the win­ning ticket and a link to the tent’s exit and onto the Over­ture.

3 = 8G = 22nd
5 = 3P = 1st
9 = 6M = 5th
14 = 3L = 3rd
17 = 2F = 4th
21 = 5H = 17th
23 = 6E = 14th

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:

The prize for the Oper­a­tor puz­zle was a new arcade game, “Punk Drop”:

whysose​ri​ous​.com/​p​u​n​k​d​r​op/

The aim is to knock down the “punks”. If you hit a dummy, a light appears next to another one, if you hit that one the light moves to the next dummy, and so on. If you com­plete three lit dummy hits in a row a ticket comes out of the machine, link­ing to a new “Stu­pid Bats” page:

whysose​ri​ous​.com/​s​t​u​p​i​d​b​a​ts/

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!

Why So Seri­ous have updated their front page for the first time in what seems an age — it now cov­ers the entire Viral mar­ket­ing cam­paign com­plete with Joker check­list on tasks, a list of Gotham city web pages and assorted items that can all be clicked for part of the viral adven­ture. For exam­ple, bowl­ing shoes, a per­son­al­ity quiz, the trailer clip­pings, let­ters from a ran­som note, etc.

Three future tasks have yet to be ticked off:

12. Be good to my guests
13. Gather all my fans
14. Leave a big mark

Reports

Some of the viral links on WSS con­tain reports on the viral event, with date, a list of occur­rences, the end result, pic­tures and the after­math — pro­vid­ing a suc­cinct review of how we’ve got this far:

Cit­i­zens for Batman

Where a page orig­i­nally stood we now find a count­down, head­ing omi­nously towards July 8th. CFB have also been send­ing out their pro­pa­ganda to lucky Gotham citizens,

Includ­ing the letter:

Cit­i­zens for Batman!

It’s time to go pub­lic. To really defend Bat­man, we have to show the world how big our move­ment is. So check out the good­ies inside and show your pride in CFB!

And get ready for a MAJOR show of force July 8th. (check out cit​i​zens​for​bat​man​.org for the latest.

Defend Gotham. Defend Batman!

Brian Dou­glass
Founder, Cit­i­zens for Bat­man

Thanks Dioz, Csam and Pierre!