"Room 401" viral marketing web phenomenon
Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if this is at all relevant to anything that we're discussing at the moment in class, but I thought I'd post about it anyway since I find it interesting.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing posted an article yesterday [our time] entitled "Ashton Kutcher's doing some kinda ARG thing?" The article is about what appears to be some sort of ARG that may or may not have something to do with a (fake?) recent VOIP startup called Ooma which Mr. Kutcher has endorsed.
Room 401 is "a television series on MTV, executive produced by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. It is named after the room Harry Houdini passed away in at Detroit's Grace Hospital in 1926." (Wikipedia)
Someone has set up a wiki documenting all the bits and pieces that make up this strange puzzle. This is the first paragraph on it: "I was watching "Room 401" on my TiVo when I noticed some weird flashes. When I slowed it down frame by frame, I found a bunch of subliminal messages being held by Ashton Kutcher -- at first, they didn't make any sense..."
So far the online portion of the campaign comprises only a few short, very strange videos, and the starting point for all of it appears to be 43475359616771.com... The videos are all linked to in various formats from the 401wtf wiki, and it would appear that the people creating this large-scale prank are broadcasting their material episodically; there are clues being left in each episode of the TV show, and people are talking about it as if it were a video podcast.
Another piece of the puzzle is 812007.com, which as of right now (6pm NZST) reads as follows:
WELCOME TO 812007.COM!
The Secret Will Be Revealed On AUGUST FIRST TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN.
There's a forum attached to 812007.com, but, in an ironic twist, it's been invaded by spam bots.
It's quite fun to watch an event like this unfold in real time; a marketing prank like this would not have been possible without the instantaneousness of new media technologies like the internet.
I'd be interested to see what other people think of all this...
--Hugh.
Xeni Jardin at BoingBoing posted an article yesterday [our time] entitled "Ashton Kutcher's doing some kinda ARG thing?" The article is about what appears to be some sort of ARG that may or may not have something to do with a (fake?) recent VOIP startup called Ooma which Mr. Kutcher has endorsed.
Room 401 is "a television series on MTV, executive produced by Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg. It is named after the room Harry Houdini passed away in at Detroit's Grace Hospital in 1926." (Wikipedia)
Someone has set up a wiki documenting all the bits and pieces that make up this strange puzzle. This is the first paragraph on it: "I was watching "Room 401" on my TiVo when I noticed some weird flashes. When I slowed it down frame by frame, I found a bunch of subliminal messages being held by Ashton Kutcher -- at first, they didn't make any sense..."
So far the online portion of the campaign comprises only a few short, very strange videos, and the starting point for all of it appears to be 43475359616771.com... The videos are all linked to in various formats from the 401wtf wiki, and it would appear that the people creating this large-scale prank are broadcasting their material episodically; there are clues being left in each episode of the TV show, and people are talking about it as if it were a video podcast.
Another piece of the puzzle is 812007.com, which as of right now (6pm NZST) reads as follows:
WELCOME TO 812007.COM!
The Secret Will Be Revealed On AUGUST FIRST TWO THOUSAND AND SEVEN.
There's a forum attached to 812007.com, but, in an ironic twist, it's been invaded by spam bots.
It's quite fun to watch an event like this unfold in real time; a marketing prank like this would not have been possible without the instantaneousness of new media technologies like the internet.
I'd be interested to see what other people think of all this...
--Hugh.
Labels: 401, alternate, ashton kutcher, bizarre, blogosphere, boing boing, game, new media, reality, viral marketing, virtual community, virtuality, wiki
posted by Hugh at 5:05 PM
1 Comments:
Spread the word about your product or service in short amount of time to millions of people.
..........
Thushara
Social Media Marketing
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