Introduction To The Art of Goth Viral Marketing (Instructor Permission Required)

Adotas is running an interesting article about a band’s viral marketing efforts on the web, but not the DIY variety. No. Nine Inch Nails is employing 42 Entertainment, an agency with alternate reality gaming experience, to do it’s bidding.

The shop creates “monetized entertainment experiences” and recommends things like “hiding in plain sight.”

Story elements that are artfully placed across existing media platforms are an effective way to deliver content as well as to drive attention to everyday messaging.

It seems they’ve taken their own advice in their effort to create buzz around Nine Inch Nails’ latest tour. Adotas reports:

According to various sources, Reznor and agency 42 Entertainment, harnessing the old Internet model of a webring, are behind a series of eerie landing pages (listed below), some endorsed by a supposed “US Bureau of Morality” and others peddling military operations like “105th Airborne Crusaders.”
iamtryingtobelieve.com
anotherversionofthetruth.com
bethehammer.net
105thairbornecrusaders.com
churchofplano.com
consolidatedmailsystems.com
The domains hint at botched military operations, fallen heroes, a tyrannical government and a mind control drug Parepin.

Angela Natividad, writing on Adrants says, “This is the way a viral campaign should be run – with a brand using multiple forms of media to play with its users and leave them things to find and chase after.”
I wonder if anyone in the intelligence community sees the above sites as a threat to national security. Now, that would certainly make for some “Boston-like” press.