Tormented by the Witch

8/8/2019 Tormented by the Witch

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T o r m e n t e d b y t h e W i t c h

TORMENTED BY

THE WITCH

any have tried to understand

the magic behind unorthodox

brands like Starbucks, Red Bull

or the entertainment favorite,

“The Blair Witch Project ”, and try

to draw actionable learnings from them.

These are brands that have achieved fast, seem-

ingly inexpensive, and sustaining success with a

revolutionary go-to-market template. They seem

like a miracle to the corporate elite, are often cited

to the troops, but are mostly misinterpreted.

Blair Witch has probably run more havoc in the

world of marketing than any other case study

since Bill Bernbach’s groundbreaking advertising

work for VW in the 60’s.

Unconventional marketing success stories are

entirely puzzling to large corporations

M




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“The Blair Witch Project” is a powerful display of getting an audience deep into an expe-

rience through many, smaller initiatives. It was a tactical masterpiece full of subconscious

techniques to make an audience believe they are in charge of the buzz and success sur-

rounding the film. It is also an important lesson in thorough and lengthy orchestration,

rather than a short-term, quick hit.

The film itself is arguably mediocre, but Blair Witch will forever be remembered as the

first movie successfully marketed via guerrilla and internet tactics, even if this interpretation

isn’t entirely correct. The real key to the sleeper hit of 1999 was that they stumbled upon

a new way to market – instead of broadcasting a product message, they facilitated

a big social idea.

The filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, knew they had quite a challenge

on their hands – they had very little money and at the beginning no distributor. So, instead

of spreading a message about the movie, they decided to spread a message about its prem-

ise - did three film students actually die in the woods? Was Blair Witch a snuff movie or

not?

This insight was pivotal, because it tapped into a fundamental social phenomenon – gos-

sip and rumors. Humans are wired for casual social conversation – it’s how we bond, build

ties and establish hierarchies (those in-the-know rank higher). Positioning Blair Witch asan urban myth played perfectly into this human tendency. It made people talk about the

movie.

Secondly, the team facilitated the spreading of the Blair Witch myth. And they targeted

several initiatives towards the right audiences, at the right time.

Let’s take a look at some of the techniques used:

Behind the scenes of the project

A former senior exec at P&G admitted in an email to us: “ P&G went through a state where it was all about

seeding and unconventional approaches. The BIG case study was The Blair Witch Project. Several brands

then tried this approach, including Physique in the US. After a year, they looked at the data and conclud-

ed -- shit, we've got incredibly low awareness!

I think it all depends what you are trying to achieve. Physique wanted to be a major player -- and hence

needed a more conventional approach. But if you're starting a new category and are willing to be patient,

then the stealth approach makes every sense.

The risk of big bang is that you spend all the money and it doesn't work. Risk of stealth is that you never

get off the ground.”

To be blunt, P&G may have oversimplified things and missed some of the crucial nuances of the Blair

Witch launch…Let’s take a closer look:




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Establish the myth before announcing the movieThe most radical marketing strategy that Blair Witch introduced was a two-year pre-seed-

ing phase of the urban legend, before they even announced the movie itself. Early movie

clips were introduced as actual “found” footage rather than a preview of an upcoming

film.

Early seeding within independent film subculture

& internet geeksMyrick and Sanchez knew that the film would only initially attract interest among the

fringe. So they targeted people like themselves – film buffs, horror freaks and Internet

junkies.

It was first mentioned on John

Pierson’s Split Screen Show, an

insider’s program aired on Bravo

and IFC, in August 1997, two

years before the release.

Then, the next major publicity

effort came only a year later in

June 1998, when the pair

launched the web site. Although

there’s some debate as to whether

or not Myrick and Sanchez plant-

ed discussion boards during thistime, what’s clear is that legiti-

mate threads did develop, debat-

ing and spreading the mythology.

Seduction of the film press and eliteAnother innovation was Myrick and Sanchez’s insistence on treating the film elite like

another audience. The film cognoscenti too needed to be wooed – first in order to get a

distributor and second, in order to control the buzz.

At the Sundance Film Festival, “missing” leaflets with pictures of the “lost” film-

makers were put up all over Park City, Utah (Artisan bought rights after the fes-tival).

No criticpreviewswere given– allowing Artisan to control the message (its about

the social idea not the movie quality) and heighten interest. A risky tactic that

worked.




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Keeping it exclusiveIn the months leading up to the release, Artisan kept the communication exclusive to the

film and horror crowd.

The first trailer appeared on the Ain’t It Cool News site in April 1999.

The film was screened at forty colleges (as opposed to with critics). Three person

teams blanketed campuses with stick figures and the proven successful “missing”

flyers to add to the mystique.

They revised the web site, updating it with “evidence” about the case – interviews

with the police, pages found from the missing filmmaker’s web sites, etc. This

insider information rewarded the most loyal fans and fed the growing buzz.

Staggered mediaDespite popular belief, Blair Witch’s success was not entirely web based. But it was the

primary medium used up to the week of release.

By then, the campaign had generated enough attention to go broad. Media kept building

on each other. From the web to cable TV, independent weeklies and radio, to finally

broadcast TV and major newspapers. (That’s one of the major points the P&G analysis

missed: A seeding strategy must go mainstream after its launch. While it is right to ini-

tially get an exclusive early market deep into the brand experience through subconscious

techniques, the strategy must change over time to appeal to the mass market.

Conventional marketing techniques like advertising are then used to create mass aware-ness and reassurance for a more risk-averse consumer.)

Even though, Artisan went mainstream around the time of their release, they did not for-

get their core audience. They co-produced with the SciFi channel a “documentary” about

the curse of the Blair Witch. They aired it late at night a few days before the release. This

documentary not only blurred the line between fact and fiction more, it also made those

who watched it feel special, like they discovered privileged information.

Rationing distributionLastly, Artisan knew they needed to keep the momentum going during the first few weeks.

So, they decided to make the viewing experience exclusive by limiting distribution in the

first three weeks: “It’s a difficult ticket to get, which was part of the concept. People dohave the experience of going and not being able to get in,” explained Artisan co-president

Amir Malin.

This created long lines, sold out theaters and heightened the buzz surrounding the film.

Another benefit was that the long lines insured the early word-of-mouth would be mostly

positive – who else would endure the lines except for the earliest fans? And these people

who would be predisposed to liking the movie.



Wide-release in2,000+ theaters

90% of advertisingbudget spent during

this phase

Comic book, CD andbook released

Film racks up $224million at the boxoffice

Debuts at NYC’sAngelika Film Center

Limited distribution,creating long linesand great PR

Advertising starts inphases, print, radioand then TV

Web site gets650,000 hits a day

Media jumps onbandwagon, directorsappear on cover ofTime Magazine

Introduced at Sundanceduring midnight screening

Artisan buys distributionrights for $1 million

Pre-screened at 40 col-leges with students, but notwith critics

Mentioned on Ain’t It CoolNews web site

Trailers shown on Ain’t ItCool, MTV and after StarWars movie

Add more “evidence” to theweb site, created fake fansites

Curse of the Blair Witch“mockumentary” airs onSciFi Channel

Second clip is shownon Split Screen Show

Pierson invites view-ers to debate the

rumor online

Blair Witch web sitegoes live

Team spreads misin-formation and drivestraffic to web site

Myrick and Sanchezappear on JohnPierson’s Split ScreenShow

They show eight min-utes of footage claim-ing that it was foundin the woods

The rumor of themissing students isplanted

Pre-Movie Announcement

(1997-1998)Post-Movie Announcement

(1999+)


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In the end, Blair Witch became the most profitable film in history – bringing in $241 million. Not bad for

a movie which cost $35,000 to produce. Artisan, though, did not fully comprehend the magic behind the

film’s success themselves. Otherwise, they would have never attempted a sequel. If they wanted to milk

the franchise any further, they should have expanded into other products and media, rather than create a

second film. The cover was blown. The mystery no longer existed. It was purely a film, not potentially

an extreme real documentary, and this lack of intrigue exposed the film as a mediocre copycat, potentially

even damaging the original.

The Evolution of Blair Witch

CREATING THE MYTH ANTICIPATING THE FILM LAUNCHING THE FILM

Seeding the Myth

Growing the Myth

Seeding the Film

Becoming the

“Next Big Thing”

Building

Momentum

A rumor starts

The rumor spreads

Switching message from

myth to movie

Limited release

Mass release

Creating the Right Context Orchestrating an Over-Night Sensation




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John Hegeman, the marketer at Artisan behind the movie’s success admitted, “The mar-

keting can never be re-created because the stars will never be aligned the same way

again.” He may be right, but a whole lot of folks – inside the entertainment industry andout – have tried to copy the Blair Witch blue print, but have mostly fallen into the trap of

drawing misleading conclusions.

Let’s take a closer look at the marketing of “Man on the Moon”, the Andy Kaufman biopic

starring Jim Carrey. In several press interviews, Universal Studios had eluded to Blair

Witch being the template for its marketing. In retrospect (always a nice position to find

yourself in), they may have drawn the wrong conclusions.

The studio focused on building a cool web site rather than

amplifying a social truthThe underpinning of BW’s success was that it tapped into a social truth – people are fas-cinated by horror and love to spread rumors. The web site was important only because it

facilitated and amplified this truth.

Universal (and a lot of other studios) didn’t get this. Instead of finding a big idea about

Andy Kaufman, they choose to build a cool fan site and conduct obscure stunts, like

Kaufmanesque public behavior by Jim Carrey. While these initiatives were relevant for

existing fans – they weren’t big enough to translate to the mainstream.

The studio chased trendsetters rather than seed early

marketsAlthough Blair Witch became the in-movie of the summer of 1999, they didn’t start outby chasing trendsetters. Artisan seemed to understand the respective and sequential roles

innovators and early adopters play within an early market:

• The fringe within early markets facilitates innovation

• The collective of opinion leaders influences mass adoption

Initiatives like films, music or fashion, in fact, any shared entertainment product or badge,

are treated as social currency. They run the high risk of embarrassing oneself with a bad

recommendation or the wrong fashion item, but the rewards for being seen as a trusted

source and trendsetter is even higher.

These trendsetters (or early adopters) in return are generally influenced themselves by social

outliers. Let’s call these innovators the influencers of the influencers. This all sets in motion

a linear pattern of influence from the extreme fringe all the way to the mainstream.

In their book The Deviant’s Advantage, Mathews and Wacker go into quite some detail on

setting social convention. They describe the pattern as “the movement from the Fringe, to

the Edge, to the Realm of the Cool, to the Next Big Thing, and, finally, to social convention.”

The fallacy of Blair Witch’s success




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We call it the ripple effect: where the idea spreads from the fringe towards opinion lead-ers in several self-referencing stages.

Blair Witch did this well, when they

first targeted internet junkies and

hardcore film buffs through postings

at film sites on the Web. Then they

seduced elite art house fans with

their publicity stunts during the

Sundance Film Festival (they plastered the town with stick figures and missing leaflets with

the actors faces on them). Next they enticed more mainstream art house fans through a

screening tour at forty colleges and universities. They hired students to publicize the screen-

ings by canvassing campuses with sticks figures and flyers.

At the same time, the team added complexity to the web site building a full-blown mythol-

ogy around the curse of the Blair Witch. This rewarded early fans with insider informa-

tion. It wasn’t until the initiative created buzz among these communities and the film was

released, that Artisan advertised Blair Witch to mainstream moviegoers.

Most marketers do not follow this model. They don’t pay attention to the linear pattern,

opting instead to seed opinion leaders right away – or even worse – seed mutually exclu-

sive targets, thereby bypassing the opportunity to create an exponential following for an

initiative.

Instead of duplicating this ripple effect for Man on the Moon, Universal targeted “trend-

setters”. They plastered city streets with wild postings, hoping that urban hipsters wouldget excited and talk about the new movie. The Andy Kaufman sticker campaign by

Shepard Fairey had no relevance for the twenty-something crowd – they were too young

to remember the glory days of Saturday Night Live. On top, the ubiquitous stickers were

a copycat of Fairey’s earlier “Obey” guerrilla artist campaign featuring Andre the Giant.

The studio fabricated “news” rather than facil itate

interpersonal communicationArtisan facilitated P2P communication by doing a lot of little things: the web site, can-

vassing college campuses with “missing” leaflets and stick figures, advertising in alterna-

tive weeklies, producing the SciFi documentary and the like.

By playing poker face about the truth of the movie and devising fresh tactics – they kept

up the buzz and misinformation happened organically. On the other hand, marketers often

seed misinformation to create talk, but lacking that big idea and the right subcultures –

their efforts result in short term hype rather than sustaining buzz.

Thus, when Universal seeded misinformation about the movie to create talk, but lacking

that big idea and the right subcultures – their efforts made a minimal impact.

Internet Junkies

Hardcore Movie Buffs

Art House Movie Goers




Blair Witch: The Facts Behind the Myth

“The web site … looks anything but low-budget. The Story and Synopsis are fantastic;when we first came upon this site, we thought that the movie was a documentary –

they’ve done that good a job of creating an extensive background to their story! Okay,so maybe we’re just naive. Either way, this is a site you should definitely check out.Make sure you download the trailer.”

- from The Wild, Wild, Web, August 1997

If you think this review is about the vaunted Blair Witch web site, you’re wrong. Notice the date, it’swritten over a year before Blair launched its web site. This little fact implies that Blair isn’t as inno-vative as its backers wanted us to think.

This Wild, Wild, Web review is for the web site of “The Last Broadcast”, an independent film, whichcame out in 1998, a year before the release of Blair Witch. While the mainstream press was busyfalling over themselves praising the uniqueness and innovativeness of Blair Witch, citing everything

from the filming, plot, web site to marketing tactics, the indie film press investigated the suspicioussimilarities between Blair and its predecessor.

Plot

The plot for Blair Witch is a striking parallel to The Last Broadcast. Broadcast is abouta four members of a cable access show called “Fact or Fiction” who venture into NewJersey’s Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil. One by one, crewmembers disap-pear or are murdered. The video footage of their gruesome demise is found. The film isa mock documentary tracing the history of the lost crew, mixing “the found footage”with interviews of friends, locals etc.

The directors, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler, weren’t too miffed by the similarities inplot between Blair and Broadcast, saying: “No, we’re not going to sue, man. There’sno such thing as original or innovative [storylines].”

In addition, they also felt like Myrick and Sanchez made an effort to reduce the unfor-tunate similarities between the two films. In the summer of 1998 as Broadcast was tour-ing independent festivals, Myrick and Sanchez were editing Blair Witch. They scrappedall the interview footage, opting instead to make Blair, a movie of the found footage only.

Web site

Much has been made about the cleverness of the Blair Witch web site. However, con-

trary to popular belief, it is not original. It is almost an exact reproduction of Broadcast’sweb site which came out fifteen months earlier. “Both web sites encourage the viewer to believe the respective film is real, with features that include a timeline of fictitiousevents, biographies of the lost ‘filmmakers’, an introductory summary of the occur-rence, fabricated ‘interviews’ with those involved and grainy evidence photos from the‘crime scene’” (The 11th Hour).

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Alex Wipperfürth ([email protected]) is a Partner at marketing boutique Plan B in San Francisco.

The Blair Witch case study is an excerpt from his upcoming book Brand Hijack.

The irony is that the Broadcast site itself borrowed heavily from another film site, a doc-umentary called “ Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills”. Avalos freely

admits that he copied from this site, but Myrick and Sanchez have been less forthcoming.When pushed, they admitted to Diane Sawyer that they did see The Last Broadcast’s website during the making of Blair Witch, but they did not admit to anything else.

Marketing

Avalos and Weiler also came up with the innovative trailers and flyers, which Blair Witch imitated. Because the two didn’t have a lot of money, Broadcast’s trailers weren’tlike typical Hollywood trailers with voiceovers, a score etc. It was just a clip from their movie, simulating the cinéma vérité of the script. Of course, Artisan did this as well.Who can forget the famous trailer with Heather Donohue, eyes bloodshot and terrified,breathing heavily into the camera?

In 1998, Broadcast went to five film festivals. As part of the promotion, Avalos andWeiler created flyers about the missing film crew. “We had people handing out flyers – weird flyers, you know? ‘Four people went in and out – what really happened?’Our fly-ers were always set up as fact as fiction,” Avalos says. In Park City and on college cam-puses, Blair Witch copied this tactic, plastering these towns with “Missing” flyers andstick figures, which by the way, were original.

So, if the two movies were so similar, why did Blair Witch succeed when The LastBroadcast failed (Broadcast never made it to big screen, but has done well in videobecause of the controversy)?

One reason is that Avalos and Weiler did not pre-seed the myth of the missing crew

and the Jersey Devil. Even though, they were clever with the web site and the market-ing of the movie at festivals, these efforts were primarily about promoting the movie. If they had created a larger context, they might have garnered more attention outside of the independent film crowd.

The second reason for Blair Witch’s astounding success is good old-fashioned showbiz connections. Even though the media played up the newcomer status of Myrick andSanchez, they failed to mention that the two had the backing of an indie film veteran,John Pierson. He invested $10,000 for the filming. He gave the Blair Witch myth itsfirst public exposure on his Split Screen Show. He was the one who encouraged his fansto debate the truth of Blair Witch on his web site. And he was and is a member of theSundance Film Festival Committee.

Which brings us to the last coincidence. Last Broadcast was actually a fairly successfulindie film. In 1998, Sundance planned to premiere the movie in their midnight slot, butat the last minute, the film was mysteriously rejected. Of course, Blair Witch took thishonor a year later and the rest, as they say, is history.

Documents

Tormented by the Witch