10 Creative Ways Movies Got You To See Them

10. Keeping Schtum – Cloverfield (2008)

While The Blair Witch Project is the obvious go-to for major (and majorly successful) viral marketing campaigns, found footage monster movie Cloverfield is an oft-overlooked contender. Those of us who were old enough to cop any of its in-and-out-of-cinema marketing will remember how the film used a tight-lipped approach to build a campaign with teasers and cryptic information that drip-fed small details of the movie and whetted all our appetites.

The very first trailers for Cloverfield provided snippets of handheld recordings of a group of New Yorkers, cutting between everyday revelry and vague glimpses of kaiju carnage on the streets of the Big Apple. Shockingly, and surely anathema to pretty much any marketing exec working today, this and other short trailers did not include the film’s title, only the production details (producer, studio, etc.).

Instead, audiences were left to chase up details online, as small details about the film were purposefully leaked to fuel internet users’ speculation and allow them to piece the details together on the run-up to a release that scored major box office success.