Storytelling and Our (Unique?) Approach to Marketing Our Mystery on the Internet

Our story is about an underage runaway girl who is being sexually exploited somewhere in Florida.

When we are ready, our story will appear with video and other posts indicating that a real-life mystery is unfolding in real time (over a few days). Our plan is to reveal exciting elements of our story online as if they are clues in a real-life mystery. When the interest in that story is peaking, using the unique form of viral marketing described below and elsewhere on this blog, we'll make our DVD available for sale. Basically our task as DIY marketers is to build interest in our film by exciting an audience online that is trying to solve (what they believe is) a real mystery.

Our immediate task (and continuing for the year before our story begins to unfold online) is to create an online presence for the characters in our story. When the time is right, these characters will play a part in alerting existing online communities (e.g., by making posts on existing blogs or websites) of developments in our story. We'll also use aggregators (both real-life existing Social Media Power Users and bloggers we've created) to initially report and then fan the flames of our story.

If we do our job well, the attention we get a year from now (because our online elements are provocative and compelling) will lead to online sales of DVDs from a website we run (or license). The online part of our story will be available for free, but anyone interested in the 90 minute film or the behind-the-scenes footage will have to buy or rent a DVD. We are budgeting such that DVD sales alone should be sufficient to cover the cost of production and to pay our investors a profit. Our hope is that we create enough interest online and in free publicity about our project that a theatrical deal (for traditional distribution of the film in theaters) or a TV deal emerges. If we create that level of interest, the discussion about the role of the media in spotlighting certain missing children (while ignoring the rest) will become part of the marketing for our film.

To create a flurry of activity a year from now that is supported by credible online information, the online work for our film (i.e., creating a web presence) has already started. We are some 8 months before production of the fictional film elements. And close to a year before we announce that Adele is missing. At the moment that Adele's disappearance is announced, we must have the DVD ready for sale. But long before we have the 90 minute film, we are creating people and blogs online and doing other tasks that will support the online search for Adele one year from now.

According to our plan, we have already started to create identities for the characters in our script online. This means, that every character in our fiction film will soon have a complete identity online, just like a real person. Because our film is a mystery, we are seeding the Internet with people and clues who will play a part in our story. In the next month we plan on having all the characters in our story online. We'll also have bloggers (other new characters we've created) who are writing themed blogs, that (when the time is right) will begin to aggregate content about our mystery online. Our plan is that these blogs will have enough of a following that our story (including video clips and text we've created as well as links to the online information we've been seeding on the net about our characters) will cause the story about our mystery to become viral at a time of our choosing. We realize that characters of our creation will need some help in getting attention. We will post elsewhere on this blog about how real-life Social Media Power Users might play a part in spreading the word about our project.

At the point when the online search for Adele begins, the audience for our blogs will become aware of video elements (and all the other information about our mystery) we have seeded online. We hope that our video elements online will be so compelling that some of them will become viral. If we succeed, within a limited amount of time elements of our story will reach thousands online. At that point we must be prepared for media attention, when our online efforts will inevitably be exposed as a hoax. At that point we'll make our DVD available for sale.