This summer sees the release of the film District 9, a sc-fi about aliens landing in South Africa and being held against their will, mistreated and segregated from human society.
Cue some pretty involved marketing. This stuff has been around for a while on the web and in the States, but if you've not seen any of it it's definitely worth a look. A large amount of effort has gone into creating a number of websites to bring the fiction into reality (sure I've seen that strategy somewhere before). From one angle you have the formal propaganda from 'Multi-National United', the oppressive organisation looking to drive segregation and limit non-human rights. Contrasted with this are more informal voices of people/aliens fighting against the oppression.
The web is used well to bring these contrasting opinions to life, e.g. using Facebook to house conversations between people looking to support non-human rights, linking to ebay for a supposed auction of alien weaponry (which is actually a real auction for a prop from the film - nice). There's good use of video within the main www.d-9.com site, which reminded me of the bar-raising stuff we saw in the Halo 3 website a few years back.
You wonder with these in-depth digital campaigns whether many people are really able to find their way around the various areas of content. In this case, in a way that is only slightly compromising of the reality-fiction blurring, various sites are linked to quite clearly from d-9.com. So at least you can experience the full marketing idea without too much difficulty.
They've had a lot of fun with the idea offline out in the States too, particularly with using outdoor formats drawing upon US and South African history of segregation.
Good stuff. Let's hope the film lives up to the marketing.
-- Alex