ARG promotions and the dark knight.

I caught a midnight showing of The Dark Knight, and was far more than impressed.

However, I don’t do movie reviews here.  So instead I’d like to ramble about something I’ve noticed in myself repeatedly – ARG (alternate reality game) regret.

A short list of creative products I’ve enjoyed, but not participated in the ARG for, include NIN’s Year Zero, Cloverfield, and now The Dark Knight.  Inevitably, the film or album ends, I become enamoured with it, and then I research the ARG, and the world-extension content that was a part of it.

Now, the design of these campaigns is for this to happen in the opposite order.  We’re supposed to build anticipation through the ARG, and therefore share that anticipation and interest with our friends.  But here’s the core problem with that:

I don’t have the time.

I’m not assuming I’m busier than anyone else, or my work is more urgent or important.  I waste a lot of my time on less than intellectual pursuits.  But I can’t imagine how I’d be able to schedule my work and social commitments around random automated phone calls from fictional characters, or scavenger hunts.

But my lack of participation doesn’t matter, because I can read about it online, and think to myself ‘oh, isn’t that cunning.’

I guess my point is, the advertising value of an ARG is likely split along an 80/20 rule: 80% of interest generated by an ARG is in non-participants, through coverage of the campaign or by catching up after the fact online, and 20% is active participants who move the game forward, and aspiring active participants who follow, but don’t actually get to participate for whatever reason.

This is another case of the product being less important that the wider influence the product has on behaviour.  The Dark Knight ARG gets people thinking about the wider world of Batman, even if they aren’t interacting with it.  That’s what matters.

Read more about the Dark Knight ARG here.