A comparison of the marketing campaigns used by 'The Dark Knight' and 'Anchorman'.

1. Marketing Campaigns:
The Dark Knight ‘Why
So Serious?’ Campaign
vs.
The Anchorman
Marketing Campaign.

2. ‘Why So Serious?’
• The ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign was for The Dark Knight,
in 2007/8. It was an interactive, online based game, in
which players were encouraged to side with either ‘The
Joker’ or ‘Harvey Dent’. Players were contacted by e-mail,
or via phone, during the game, making ‘Gotham City’ spill
into the real world.
• The campaign was originally not intended to focus so
sharply on ‘The Joker’; however, following the death of
Heath Ledger, Warner Brothers decided to capitalise on
his tragic death and shifted the focus of the campaign
onto ‘The Joker’.

3. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
=YDkh62oL1Y4&feature=related
• This is the voice message that players
received after signing up for the game.
This was one of many phone calls received
by players from ‘The Joker’. This use of
phone calls, as well as e-mails, made the
players feel involved with the game and
the film, as it gave them the chance to
uncover things for themselves about the
film (such as trailers, images etc)

4. The Website.
• www.whysoserious.com is the website for the campaign.
The initial homepage appears to be a messy desk, but all
the ‘objects’ are actually links. These links lead to
different online pages, which were part of the campaign.
This includes a vandalised ‘Gotham Times’ newspaper,
police reports from the ‘Gotham Police Department’ and
a ‘personality test’ to see if a player was worthy of being
a ‘clown’.
• The website also featured a black banner, as a memorial
to Heath Ledger, who died during the filming of the film,
and there is still a link to the gva foundation on the
website.

5. • Many, many people were involved in ‘The Joker’s’
team. They were encouraged to take to the streets,
wearing full Joker make-up, and protest about another
character in the film, ‘Harvey Dent’.
• They had to take pictures of clues, which could be
found across the US, and post them online. This
unlocked trailers and other content, but also got the
public involved in the film.
• http://www.youtube.com/user/ClownsAgainstDent
This is a YouTube channel for a ‘clown protester’,
showing videos that bash ‘Harvey Dent’, and which
show the person having full support for ‘The Joker’.

6. ‘I Believe In Harvey Dent’
• Following ‘The Joker’ contacting players and causing
protests worldwide, other players were contacted by
‘Harvey Dent’, asking for support against ‘The Joker’,
and to bring Gotham back to order.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen
&NR=1&v=26yDweuWng0
• Players received this phone message, and were
encouraged to counter-protest, wearing t-shirts with
the slogan, or dressing as the character.

7. Why was this campaign so successful?
• Target audience: this campaign hit the exact right target
audience. People who enjoy ARG are also people who
generally enjoy comic-book hero adaptations. It also hits the
right target audience, as young people often want to make a
stand and be heard, and young people are usually tech-savvy
and the main demographic of the internet, where the game
originated.
• The scale: this campaign was huge. It blurred the lines of
reality and imagination for millions of people. This film was
widely anticipated, so there was already excitement for it, and
having a huge online campaign, feeding content bit by bit, was
a way to heighten this excitement and make it huge. The fact
it was also worldwide helped this, as well.

8. Why was this campaign so
successful?
• Heath Ledger’s death: Warner Brothers really cashed in on this
(which angered me greatly), as this game (and many of the other
advertisements) have him as The Joker in the main focus. It is
widely known that Heath Ledger’s death was a result of a mental
breakdown due to preparing for his role as The Joker, and a scandal
like that can either make or break a film. Warner Brothers used his
death as a means of creating excitement for the film. By having him
the main focus, people immediately wanted to be part of anything
involving The Joker, as they wanted to understand why preparing
for the role had destroyed Heath Ledger.
• The first film: the first film was a huge hit, and so the sequel was
widely anticipated. Because the first was a massive hit, anything
fans could get involving the sequel would’ve been latched on to in
anticipation for ‘The Dark Knight’.

9. Why was the campaign so successful?
• Batman’s non-appearance: Batman does not feature in this
campaign, which you’d think he would, seeing as he is the main
character. The fact that he doesn’t appear almost sets the audience
up for the film, as The Joker and Harvey Dent have been running
around doing this viral campaign, without Batman interfering. It’s
almost like the film the game is the bit we don’t see before the film,
and Batman coming in and sorting them out is the end of it. I could
probably phrase this better but the words aren’t coming to me.
Basically, Batman not being there builds more excitement, because
the audience wants to see what Batman will do about all these
shenanigans in the film.

10. Vs.

11. Anchorman’s Friendster Campaign
• Anchorman launched a campaign on Friendster, in
which they created user profiles for the characters
and had a banner across the top of the webpage.
• This campaign was pretty much a fail. The characters
only had a couple of hundred ‘friend requests’ each,
which is nothing compared to the amount of people
online.

12. This shows the banner used, and the friend
‘profile request’. It’s all pretty basic.

13. Why was this not successful?
• The time: in 2004, social networking was not what it is
today. The fact that they used a site like ‘Friendster’
shows this, as nobody really uses ‘Friendster’ any more,
and I don’t even really know what it is.
• The campaign was pretty basic: make character profiles
and put a big banner on the website. These character
profiles would have been funny at first, if they posted
(once again, I don’t know what Friendster does), but they
would’ve become dull after a while, as it is nothing new
after time.

14. Comparing the two campaigns
• Time: as I said before, social networking in 2004 was not
what it is today. Technology moves on so fast, which can be
seen in the way that only 3 or 4 years later, another
company utilised social networking sites and made a huge
campaign.
• Interactivity: the ‘Why So Serious?’ campaign was
worldwide, and was interactive, whilst the Friendster
campaign was not. It may have been worldwide, but it
didn’t get people involved in the same way that that The
Dark Knight’s campaign did.
• Budget: The Dark Knight was a sequel to a very successful
blockbuster, whilst Anchorman wasn’t, meaning that it
would have had more budget to do this online thing than
Anchorman.

15. Comparison (cont)
• History: everybody knows Batman. Everybody loves
Batman. Not everybody knows Ron Burgandy. At the
time of release of ‘The Dark Knight’, Batman was a
well established character, as were The Joker and
Harvey Dent, other characters involved in the
campaign. Before Anchorman, Ron Burgandy didn’t
exist, and so there was no connection between the
character and the intended audience. This meant the
audience would be less likely to get involved in
something to do with this film.