The witch whose marketers were good

There are few cult horror films like The Blair Witch Project, which was made for a total of $35,000 (in Hungarian: Ideglelés). Not only the film but also the marketing strategy used for its promotion is quite witch-like.

Three student filmmakers disappear during fieldwork in the Black Mountains. No one hears from the young people who tried to investigate the mystery of the mysterious Blair Witch again. A year later, the students' camera is found under a pile of stones. And what the camera reveals... is one of the most original stories in marketing history. The winding lines and $241 million in revenue generated by the Blair Witch Project were based on a marketing strategy that remains unmatched and unrepeatable to this day.

What was the secret of the success of Ideglelés?

Integrated marketing communication strategy

From the very beginning, the creative team thought in terms of a coordinated, multi-channel campaign. Instead of using traditional marketing tools, they focused on guerrilla and content marketing. When selecting offline tools, an important consideration was to drive traffic to the website. The guerrilla marketing strategy employed is still considered a textbook example: they filmed a mockumentary featuring the „victims”„ family members, acquaintances, and teachers, as well as detectives and experts dealing with the ”case." The documentary was screened in university film clubs, generating debates about what was seen. The area around the campuses was plastered with photos of the missing young people.

The appearance of authenticity

The filmmakers also appeared on television talk shows, greatly increasing the story's credibility. During the conversation, viewers were directed to the website. All of this generated huge visitor numbers: there was a day when the website recorded 650,000 visits (22 million by the premiere!). The „evidence” was released slowly: interviews, biographies, fake police reports, and bogus newspaper articles were published. The authenticity was further strengthened by the fact that the location was real: Blair, a small town in Maryland with a few hundred residents, actually exists.

Myth-making

The website (still operational today) www.blairwitch.com) Its primary goal was to build a legend. They created a complete mythology around a witch that never actually existed and consciously blurred the lines between reality and fiction. The website presented the circumstances, the location, and the witch's legend with documentary detail. The mysterious disappearance of the characters was also part of the legend-building: on the IMDb page, next to the actors„ names in the credits, the following sentence appeared: ”they disappeared, presumably dead.".

Time for the marketing strategy to unfold

The campaign is unique because the preparation phase began two years (!) before the film's premiere. The campaign was built on two well-defined phases. The first phase focused on myth-making and its dissemination, with very little information leaked about the film. The second, shorter phase (to which the majority of the marketing budget was reallocated) was about promoting the film.

Keeping in uncertainty

The creative team consciously built on human curiosity and slowly trickled out new information. People felt that the line between reality and fiction was thin, but everyone was intrigued by the mystery and awaited new developments. Did the young people really disappear? Is this a true story? What happened in Blair? The heated debates on internet forums were often sparked by the viral marketing team through the drip-feeding of information.

Involvement of influencers

The viral marketing team addressed communities during the campaign in a way that made them feel they were receiving valuable, rare information. Rumors and information then trickled out from the inner circles of communities and forums composed of internet addicts, horror and sci-fi fans, and film enthusiasts. In the months leading up to the premiere, the creative team focused on these circles. The mockumentary was first aired on the Sci-Fi Channel, a few days before the film premiere, deliberately skipping theaters.

The tactic worked: influencers „brought the film into fashion” for those who did not specifically enjoy the horror genre. The number of screenings in theaters was limited. All of this resulted in huge lines and mass hysteria: everyone wanted to see the mysterious and chilling witch story.

The astonishing effectiveness of the integrated marketing strategy can be found in the synergy of the well-chosen tools. The guerrilla and content marketing-focused campaign was able to provide impressive publicity and revenue for a medium-sized horror film, years before the social media era. Nothing proves the success of the applied marketing strategy better than the fact that to this day, astonishingly many people believe in the story's authenticity and the existence of the mysterious Blair witch.