Cloverfield
The last great movie mystery born from a teaser with no title, just a date: 1-18-08. Message boards dissected every frame for months before anyone knew what it was.
#Viral Marketing
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Paranormal Activity
A camera on a tripod, a bedroom door, and whatever it is that moves while they sleep. The $15,000 haunted-house movie that terrified test audiences into walking out — and rode a 'Demand It' campaign to nearly $200 million in the fall of 2009.
Subservient Chicken
A man in a chicken suit stood in a living room on what looked like a live webcam and did whatever you typed: moonwalk, lay egg, do the YMCA. Burger King's Subservient Chicken site, built to sell the TenderCrisp sandwich in April 2004, became the textbook case for viral marketing, and nobody could quite explain it to their parents.
The Blair Witch Project
Three film students walk into the Maryland woods to document a local legend; only their footage comes back. The Blair Witch Project cost less to shoot than a used car and grossed nearly $250 million in 1999 — because its marketing convinced a meaningful slice of America that the tape was real and the actors were dead.
Will It Blend?
"Will it blend? That is the question." Blendtec founder Tom Dickson, in a white lab coat, fed marbles, a rake handle, golf balls and eventually a brand-new iPhone into his blender and reduced each to dust. It started in October 2006 on a $50 budget and became the viral campaign every marketing class studied.