GLOBAL – JULY 22, 2011 – In a world of increasingly shorter attention spans, how can advertising grasp the interest of a population starving for instant gratification? The answer: by getting creative. Viral campaigns have been used with increasing regularity by the entertainment industry to reach a wider audience, with varying results. Now, with the upcoming release of the Rise of the Planet of the Apes film on August 4, a new viral campaign debuts with mixed reviews.
The Apes Will Rise campaign consists of a series of videos on YouTube showing chimpanzees and gorillas performing decidedly human acts such as wielding weapons and playing first-person shooter games. These videos have been put onto the internet under the guise of rediscovered footage, with some real videos, such as the gorilla walking upright and the chimpanzee beating a human at a memory test, thrown in with the fabricated videos to further blur the lines between reality and Hollywood magic.
This viral campaign adds an immersive quality to the franchise, making the premise of an ape invasion in modern days all the more realistic, resulting in much needed interested in the reboot of the film after the Tim Burton-directed flop of 2001. The success of such campaigns varies, with the flop of a fake YouTube video for the 2011 film, Limitless, in juxtaposition to the very successful Blairwitch.com campaign started in 1999. Through the internet, interest in the upcoming film has been growing, and the campaign certainly adds an interesting edge to the film’s promotion, though it has incited a large amount of controversy.
Many people believe that all of the videos are real, sparking the heated debate seen throughout the online community. Though many people believe that the viral campaign was an interesting idea, many others felt that it was contrived, with some being outraged at one particular video and its use of the Ugandan massacres under the rule of Idi Amin in the 1970s as a promotion for this film. With several comments along the lines of “This is low, and disgusting” from YouTube user LuckyDukeSeven, can this viral campaign for the upcoming Rise of the Planet of the Apes film be considered a success?
In some ways, the answer is yes. Though many negative comments have been written, many positive comments have been seen as well. Through YouTube and a bit of buzz generated by the blogosphere, interest in the film has grown, despite various negative reviews. The phrase, “any publicity is good publicity” is manifested in the amount of YouTube views, which reached a total of 10.8 million views for the five videos as of today, just about as many as the hits of the two actual trailers. Worth noting is that 9 million of the viral hits are for the “Ape With AK-47” video (above) alone. It is therefore safe to say that the Apes Will Rise viral campaign has been successful overall and undeterred by negative reviews, although the true test of its success will come with the announcement of a box office triumph for the Planet of the Apes prequel.
