TORMENTED BY

THE WITCH
Unconventional marketing success stories are
entirely puzzling to large corporations"""

any have tried to understand

M the magic behind unorthodox

brands like Starbucks, Red Bull
or the entertainment favorite,
“The Blair Witch Project”, and try
to draw actionable learnings from them.

These are brands that have achieved fast, seem-

ingly inexpensive, and sustaining success with a
revolutionary go-to-market template. They seem
like a miracle to the corporate elite, are often cited
to the troops, but are mostly misinterpreted.

Blair Witch has probably run more havoc in the

world of marketing than any other case study
since Bill Bernbach’s groundbreaking advertising
work for VW in the 60’s.

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A former senior exec at P&G admitted in an email to us: “P&G went through a state where it was all about
seeding and unconventional approaches. The BIG case study was The Blair Witch Project. Several brands
then tried this approach, including Physique in the US. After a year, they looked at the data and conclud-
ed -- shit, we've got incredibly low awareness!

I think it all depends what you are trying to achieve. Physique wanted to be a major player -- and hence
needed a more conventional approach. But if you're starting a new category and are willing to be patient,
then the stealth approach makes every sense.

The risk of big bang is that you spend all the money and it doesn't work. Risk of stealth is that you never
get off the ground.”

To be blunt, P&G may have oversimplified things and missed some of the crucial nuances of the Blair
Witch launch…Let’s take a closer look:

Behind the scenes of the project

“The Blair Witch Project” is a powerful display of getting an audience deep into an expe-
rience through many, smaller initiatives. It was a tactical masterpiece full of subconscious
techniques to make an audience believe they are in charge of the buzz and success sur-
rounding the film. It is also an important lesson in thorough and lengthy orchestration,
rather than a short-term, quick hit.

The film itself is arguably mediocre, but Blair Witch will forever be remembered as the
first movie successfully marketed via guerrilla and internet tactics, even if this interpretation
isn’t entirely correct. The real key to the sleeper hit of 1999 was that they stumbled upon
a new way to market – instead of broadcasting a product message, they facilitated
a big social idea.

The filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, knew they had quite a challenge
on their hands – they had very little money and at the beginning no distributor. So, instead
of spreading a message about the movie, they decided to spread a message about its prem-
ise - did three film students actually die in the woods? Was Blair Witch a snuff movie or
not?

This insight was pivotal, because it tapped into a fundamental social phenomenon – gos-
sip and rumors. Humans are wired for casual social conversation – it’s how we bond, build
ties and establish hierarchies (those in-the-know rank higher). Positioning Blair Witch as
an urban myth played perfectly into this human tendency. It made people talk about the
movie.
Secondly, the team facilitated the spreading of the Blair Witch myth. And they targeted
several initiatives towards the right audiences, at the right time.

Let’s take a look at some of the techniques used:

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Establish the myth before announcing the movie

The most radical marketing strategy that Blair Witch introduced was a two-year pre-seed-
ing phase of the urban legend, before they even announced the movie itself. Early movie
clips were introduced as actual “found” footage rather than a preview of an upcoming
film.

Early seeding within independent film subculture

& internet geeks
Myrick and Sanchez knew that the film would only initially attract interest among the
fringe. So they targeted people like themselves – film buffs, horror freaks and Internet
junkies.

It was first mentioned on John

Pierson’s Split Screen Show, an
insider’s program aired on Bravo
and IFC, in August 1997, two
years before the release.

Then, the next major publicity

effort came only a year later in
June 1998, when the pair
launched the web site. Although
there’s some debate as to whether
or not Myrick and Sanchez plant-
ed discussion boards during this
time, what’s clear is that legiti-
mate threads did develop, debat-
ing and spreading the mythology.

Seduction of the film press and elite

Another innovation was Myrick and Sanchez’s insistence on treating the film elite like
another audience. The film cognoscenti too needed to be wooed – first in order to get a
distributor and second, in order to control the buzz.

At the Sundance Film Festival, “missing” leaflets with pictures of the “lost” film-
makers were put up all over Park City, Utah (Artisan bought rights after the fes-
tival).

No critic previews were given – allowing Artisan to control the message (its about
the social idea not the movie quality) and heighten interest. A risky tactic that
worked.

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Keeping it exclusive
In the months leading up to the release, Artisan kept the communication exclusive to the
film and horror crowd.

The first trailer appeared on the Ain’t It Cool News site in April 1999.

The film was screened at forty colleges (as opposed to with critics). Three person
teams blanketed campuses with stick figures and the proven successful “missing”
flyers to add to the mystique.

They revised the web site, updating it with “evidence” about the case – interviews
with the police, pages found from the missing filmmaker’s web sites, etc. This
insider information rewarded the most loyal fans and fed the growing buzz.

Staggered media
Despite popular belief, Blair Witch’s success was not entirely web based. But it was the
primary medium used up to the week of release.

By then, the campaign had generated enough attention to go broad. Media kept building
on each other. From the web to cable TV, independent weeklies and radio, to finally
broadcast TV and major newspapers. (That’s one of the major points the P&G analysis
missed: A seeding strategy must go mainstream after its launch. While it is right to ini-
tially get an exclusive early market deep into the brand experience through subconscious
techniques, the strategy must change over time to appeal to the mass market.
Conventional marketing techniques like advertising are then used to create mass aware-
ness and reassurance for a more risk-averse consumer.)

Even though, Artisan went mainstream around the time of their release, they did not for-
get their core audience. They co-produced with the SciFi channel a “documentary” about
the curse of the Blair Witch. They aired it late at night a few days before the release. This
documentary not only blurred the line between fact and fiction more, it also made those
who watched it feel special, like they discovered privileged information.

Rationing distribution
Lastly, Artisan knew they needed to keep the momentum going during the first few weeks.
So, they decided to make the viewing experience exclusive by limiting distribution in the
first three weeks: “It’s a difficult ticket to get, which was part of the concept. People do
have the experience of going and not being able to get in,” explained Artisan co-president
Amir Malin.

This created long lines, sold out theaters and heightened the buzz surrounding the film.
Another benefit was that the long lines insured the early word-of-mouth would be mostly
positive – who else would endure the lines except for the earliest fans? And these people
who would be predisposed to liking the movie.

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The Evolution of Blair Witch

Pre-Movie Announcement Post-Movie Announcement
(1997-1998) (1999+)

CREATING THE MYTH ANTICIPATING THE FILM LAUNCHING THE FILM

Building
Momentum
Mass release
Becoming the Wide-release in
“Next Big Thing” 2,000+ theaters

Limited release 90% of advertising

Seeding the Film
Switching message from
myth to movie
Introduced at Sundance
during midnight screening
Artisan buys distribution
Growing the Myth
rights for $1 million
budget spent during
Debuts at NYC’s this phase
Angelika Film Center
Comic book, CD and
Limited distribution, book released
creating long lines
and great PR Film racks up $224
million at the box
Advertising starts in office
phases, print, radio
and then TV

The rumor spreads Pre-screened at 40 col- Web site gets

leges with students, but not 650,000 hits a day
Second clip is shown with critics
Seeding the Myth on Split Screen Show Media jumps on
Mentioned on Ain’t It Cool bandwagon, directors
A rumor starts Pierson invites view- News web site appear on cover of
ers to debate the Time Magazine
Myrick and Sanchez rumor online Trailers shown on Ain’t It
appear on John Cool, MTV and after Star
Pierson’s Split Screen Blair Witch web site Wars movie
Show goes live
Add more “evidence” to the
They show eight min- Team spreads misin- web site, created fake fan
utes of footage claim- formation and drives sites
ing that it was found traffic to web site
in the woods Curse of the Blair Witch
“mockumentary” airs on
The rumor of the SciFi Channel
missing students is
planted

Creating the Right Context Orchestrating an Over-Night Sensation

In the end, Blair Witch became the most profitable film in history – bringing in $241 million. Not bad for
a movie which cost $35,000 to produce. Artisan, though, did not fully comprehend the magic behind the
film’s success themselves. Otherwise, they would have never attempted a sequel. If they wanted to milk
the franchise any further, they should have expanded into other products and media, rather than create a
second film. The cover was blown. The mystery no longer existed. It was purely a film, not potentially
an extreme real documentary, and this lack of intrigue exposed the film as a mediocre copycat, potentially
even damaging the original.

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The fallacy of Blair Witch’s success
John Hegeman, the marketer at Artisan behind the movie’s success admitted, “The mar-
keting can never be re-created because the stars will never be aligned the same way
again.” He may be right, but a whole lot of folks – inside the entertainment industry and
out – have tried to copy the Blair Witch blue print, but have mostly fallen into the trap of
drawing misleading conclusions.

Let’s take a closer look at the marketing of “Man on the Moon”, the Andy Kaufman biopic
starring Jim Carrey. In several press interviews, Universal Studios had eluded to Blair
Witch being the template for its marketing. In retrospect (always a nice position to find
yourself in), they may have drawn the wrong conclusions.

The studio focused on building a cool web site rather than

amplifying a social truth
The underpinning of BW’s success was that it tapped into a social truth – people are fas-
cinated by horror and love to spread rumors. The web site was important only because it
facilitated and amplified this truth.

Universal (and a lot of other studios) didn’t get this. Instead of finding a big idea about
Andy Kaufman, they choose to build a cool fan site and conduct obscure stunts, like
Kaufmanesque public behavior by Jim Carrey. While these initiatives were relevant for
existing fans – they weren’t big enough to translate to the mainstream.

The studio chased trendsetters rather than seed early

markets
Although Blair Witch became the in-movie of the summer of 1999, they didn’t start out
by chasing trendsetters. Artisan seemed to understand the respective and sequential roles
innovators and early adopters play within an early market:

• The fringe within early markets facilitates innovation

• The collective of opinion leaders influences mass adoption

Initiatives like films, music or fashion, in fact, any shared entertainment product or badge,
are treated as social currency. They run the high risk of embarrassing oneself with a bad
recommendation or the wrong fashion item, but the rewards for being seen as a trusted
source and trendsetter is even higher.

These trendsetters (or early adopters) in return are generally influenced themselves by social
outliers. Let’s call these innovators the influencers of the influencers. This all sets in motion
a linear pattern of influence from the extreme fringe all the way to the mainstream.

In their book The Deviant’s Advantage, Mathews and Wacker go into quite some detail on
setting social convention. They describe the pattern as “the movement from the Fringe, to
the Edge, to the Realm of the Cool, to the Next Big Thing, and, finally, to social convention.”

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We call it the ripple effect: where the idea spreads from the fringe towards opinion lead-
ers in several self-referencing stages.

Blair Witch did this well, when they

first targeted internet junkies and Internet Junkies
hardcore film buffs through postings Hardcore Movie Buffs
at film sites on the Web. Then they Art House Movie Goers
seduced elite art house fans with
their publicity stunts during the
Sundance Film Festival (they plastered the town with stick figures and missing leaflets with
the actors faces on them). Next they enticed more mainstream art house fans through a
screening tour at forty colleges and universities. They hired students to publicize the screen-
ings by canvassing campuses with sticks figures and flyers.

At the same time, the team added complexity to the web site building a full-blown mythol-
ogy around the curse of the Blair Witch. This rewarded early fans with insider informa-
tion. It wasn’t until the initiative created buzz among these communities and the film was
released, that Artisan advertised Blair Witch to mainstream moviegoers.

Most marketers do not follow this model. They don’t pay attention to the linear pattern,
opting instead to seed opinion leaders right away – or even worse – seed mutually exclu-
sive targets, thereby bypassing the opportunity to create an exponential following for an
initiative.

Instead of duplicating this ripple effect for Man on the Moon, Universal targeted “trend-
setters”. They plastered city streets with wild postings, hoping that urban hipsters would
get excited and talk about the new movie. The Andy Kaufman sticker campaign by
Shepard Fairey had no relevance for the twenty-something crowd – they were too young
to remember the glory days of Saturday Night Live. On top, the ubiquitous stickers were
a copycat of Fairey’s earlier “Obey” guerrilla artist campaign featuring Andre the Giant.

The studio fabricated “news” rather than facilitate

interpersonal communication
Artisan facilitated P2P communication by doing a lot of little things: the web site, can-
vassing college campuses with “missing” leaflets and stick figures, advertising in alterna-
tive weeklies, producing the SciFi documentary and the like.

By playing poker face about the truth of the movie and devising fresh tactics – they kept
up the buzz and misinformation happened organically. On the other hand, marketers often
seed misinformation to create talk, but lacking that big idea and the right subcultures –
their efforts result in short term hype rather than sustaining buzz.

Thus, when Universal seeded misinformation about the movie to create talk, but lacking
that big idea and the right subcultures – their efforts made a minimal impact.

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Blair Witch: The Facts Behind the Myth
“The web site … looks anything but low-budget. The Story and Synopsis are fantastic;
when we first came upon this site, we thought that the movie was a documentary –
they’ve done that good a job of creating an extensive background to their story! Okay,
so maybe we’re just naive. Either way, this is a site you should definitely check out.
Make sure you download the trailer.”
- from The Wild, Wild, Web, August 1997

If you think this review is about the vaunted Blair Witch web site, you’re wrong. Notice the date, it’s
written over a year before Blair launched its web site. This little fact implies that Blair isn’t as inno-
vative as its backers wanted us to think.

This Wild, Wild, Web review is for the web site of “The Last Broadcast”, an independent film, which
came out in 1998, a year before the release of Blair Witch. While the mainstream press was busy
falling over themselves praising the uniqueness and innovativeness of Blair Witch, citing everything
from the filming, plot, web site to marketing tactics, the indie film press investigated the suspicious
similarities between Blair and its predecessor.

Plot
The plot for Blair Witch is a striking parallel to The Last Broadcast. Broadcast is about
a four members of a cable access show called “Fact or Fiction” who venture into New
Jersey’s Pine Barrens in search of the Jersey Devil. One by one, crewmembers disap-
pear or are murdered. The video footage of their gruesome demise is found. The film is
a mock documentary tracing the history of the lost crew, mixing “the found footage”
with interviews of friends, locals etc.

The directors, Stefan Avalos and Lance Weiler, weren’t too miffed by the similarities in
plot between Blair and Broadcast, saying: “No, we’re not going to sue, man. There’s
no such thing as original or innovative [storylines].”

In addition, they also felt like Myrick and Sanchez made an effort to reduce the unfor-
tunate similarities between the two films. In the summer of 1998 as Broadcast was tour-
ing independent festivals, Myrick and Sanchez were editing Blair Witch. They scrapped
all the interview footage, opting instead to make Blair, a movie of the found footage only.

Web site
Much has been made about the cleverness of the Blair Witch web site. However, con-
trary to popular belief, it is not original. It is almost an exact reproduction of Broadcast’s
web site which came out fifteen months earlier. “Both web sites encourage the viewer
to believe the respective film is real, with features that include a timeline of fictitious
events, biographies of the lost ‘filmmakers’, an introductory summary of the occur-
rence, fabricated ‘interviews’ with those involved and grainy evidence photos from the
‘crime scene’” (The 11th Hour).

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The irony is that the Broadcast site itself borrowed heavily from another film site, a doc-
umentary called “Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills”. Avalos freely
admits that he copied from this site, but Myrick and Sanchez have been less forthcoming.
When pushed, they admitted to Diane Sawyer that they did see The Last Broadcast’s web
site during the making of Blair Witch, but they did not admit to anything else.

Marketing
Avalos and Weiler also came up with the innovative trailers and flyers, which Blair
Witch imitated. Because the two didn’t have a lot of money, Broadcast’s trailers weren’t
like typical Hollywood trailers with voiceovers, a score etc. It was just a clip from their
movie, simulating the cinéma vérité of the script. Of course, Artisan did this as well.
Who can forget the famous trailer with Heather Donohue, eyes bloodshot and terrified,
breathing heavily into the camera?

In 1998, Broadcast went to five film festivals. As part of the promotion, Avalos and
Weiler created flyers about the missing film crew. “We had people handing out flyers –
weird flyers, you know? ‘Four people went in and out – what really happened?’ Our fly-
ers were always set up as fact as fiction,” Avalos says. In Park City and on college cam-
puses, Blair Witch copied this tactic, plastering these towns with “Missing” flyers and
stick figures, which by the way, were original.

So, if the two movies were so similar, why did Blair Witch succeed when The Last
Broadcast failed (Broadcast never made it to big screen, but has done well in video
because of the controversy)?

One reason is that Avalos and Weiler did not pre-seed the myth of the missing crew
and the Jersey Devil. Even though, they were clever with the web site and the market-
ing of the movie at festivals, these efforts were primarily about promoting the movie. If
they had created a larger context, they might have garnered more attention outside of
the independent film crowd.

The second reason for Blair Witch’s astounding success is good old-fashioned show
biz connections. Even though the media played up the newcomer status of Myrick and
Sanchez, they failed to mention that the two had the backing of an indie film veteran,
John Pierson. He invested $10,000 for the filming. He gave the Blair Witch myth its
first public exposure on his Split Screen Show. He was the one who encouraged his fans
to debate the truth of Blair Witch on his web site. And he was and is a member of the
Sundance Film Festival Committee.

Which brings us to the last coincidence. Last Broadcast was actually a fairly successful
indie film. In 1998, Sundance planned to premiere the movie in their midnight slot, but
at the last minute, the film was mysteriously rejected. Of course, Blair Witch took this
honor a year later and the rest, as they say, is history.

Alex Wipperfürth (alex@plan-b.biz) is a Partner at marketing boutique Plan B in San Francisco.

The Blair Witch case study is an excerpt from his upcoming book Brand Hijack.

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