Why So Serious Campaign?

The Dark Knight is by far one of the greatest movies ever. In my opinion anyway. However, this great movie didn't get all this hype for no reason. There was a lot of work done.  Here is a video showing exactly how this hype was built:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpuC7HhCPWA

Warner Bros worked with  42 entertainment  to create  " Why So Serious?"
It began in May 2007 and ended up becoming a huge viral campaign. The campaign was mainly centered on the web, mobile, flash mobs, scavenger hunts, casual games, user generated content, collaborative narratives and also by video streaming. However, audiences were also immersed in the sag of Gotham City.
Over 10 million fans in 75 countries had participated ! This helped the movie become the most successful movie of 2008 and also the second highest grossing movie of all time!

The Website


The Why So Serious website played a huge part in the movies success. 42 entertainment launched a website which began a viral marketing campaign featuring the fictional political campaign of fictional character Harvey Dent. But there was a twist; 42 entertainment also established a "vandalised" version of "I believe in Harvey Dent" which was names " I believe in Harvey Dent too" where the emails that were sent by fans slowly started to remove pixels, and what did this do? Revealed a picture of the joker! It was then replaced with many "Hahas" and " see you in December"

Now obviously with a movie like The Dark Knight, with all the potential it had, there would have been a huge demand for illegal copies but Warner Bros were aware of this. Therefore, they had devoted a six month campaign to an anti-piracy strategy that involved a six month tracking down process of the people who had released a pirate copy of this film at any time.

Marketing Campaign


The movie made a huge profit which was to it's benefit and also not very surprising.
The campaign which had got everyone involved in the "I believe in Harvey Dent" earned them a lot of money. Participants were almost forced into buying products such as the cakes for Harvey Dent's phone because without them, they could not have carried on.

Millions of Batman toys, posters, t-shirts and even bed sheets were sold all over the world as there was such a hype. This obviously helped the company gain a lot of notice and money.

The Dark Knight had a budget of $185 million and the box office had made $1,001,921,825

So you can see how successful it was

Here is the trailer for the film:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQ5U8suTUw0