The Viral Marketing Campaign- The Dark Knight

The Viral Campaign- The Dark Knight

May 2007- Viral Marketing campaign begins using the film's tagline 'Why So Serious?' Designed to attract fans of the franchise.

Viral marketing: a method of marketing, particularly suited to email and the internet due to it's immediate nature, that encourages people to pass on the message to colleagues, friends or family as they perceive it to be relevant.

Campaign takes the form of  a website featuring the fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent, with the caption "I Believe in Harvey Dent".

A second website was created, a vandalized version called " I Believe In Harvey Dent Too"Fan send in emails to slowly remove pixels of the first official image, taking 24 hours.Later replaced with "haha's" and a hidden message that read " see you in December" a hint to the teaser trailer.

October 2007 - Website changed into a scavenger hunt with hidden messages, fans were to uncover clues at certain locations across american and take pictures. The clues combining to reveal a picture of the joker and a voice clip from the film- " And tonight, you're gunna break your one rule."Completing this lead to another website where fans could submit images of them dressed as the Joker. Those who did were sent a copy of a fictional newspaper- The Gotham Times, whose electronic version led to more websites. 

December 2007- Films opening sequence and closing montage of other scenes from the film was screened with selected IMAX screenings of I Am Ledgend. With non- IMAX showings of I Am Ledgend a theatrical teaser trailer was also released as well as on the website.

January 2008- After the death of Heath Ledger, Warner Bros. adjusted it's promotional focus on the joker. A memorial tribute to Ledger was posted on the films official website. A black memorial ribbon was placed on the photo collage in WhySo Serious.com.

February 2008- I Believe in Harvey Dent was update to allow fans to send in their email addresses and number.

March 2008- Actual campaign buses- "Dentmobiles" toured various cities to promote den't candidacy for district attorney, announced by the fictional Harvey Dent campaign.

May 15th 2008- Six Flags theme parks opened The Dark Knight roller coaster, which cost $7.5m to develop which simulates being stalked by the joker.Mattel produced toys and games- action figures, role play costumes, board games, puzzles and a special edition UNO game ( distributed in June 2008.

July 2008- Sequence released on the Blu Ray Disc edition of Batman Begins. Batman: Gotham Knight a direct to DVD animation was also released. 

PiracySix Months was devoted by Warner Bros. on a anti- piracy strategy. It involved: Tracking people who had pre-release copy. Staggered shipping and delivery. Spot checks carried out domestically and overseas to ensure illegal copying was not taking part in cinemas. 38 hours after the film's release a pirated copy appeared, the film industry taunted by The Pirate Bay when the film was available free on the site.

DVD ReleaseThe Dark Knight sold 513,000 units on the first day of release, including 107,730 Blu- Ray discs, a record for the format, according to digitalspy.co.uk.

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