The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises Marketing Campaign's are Top Notch

Yesterday, the folks over at Warner Brothers kicked off their latest marketing campaign for The Dark Knight Rises. Upon heading over to thedarkknightrises.com you are greeted by a folder from the Gotham Police Department on their investigation into the anonymous vigilante known as "The Batman."

Inside you get to view the warrant to arrest John Doe aka “The batman” and his list of charges, the wanted poster from the Gotham Police Department and a letter from the Office of the Commissioner stating that the search for “The Batman” will continue on Harvey Dent Day. From there the real marketing campaign takes off. The last few pages of the file are a list of locations worldwide where you can view the bat symbol as graffiti. They suggest that people suggest photographic evidence of the graffiti by emailing it or using a hash tag on Twitter.

Now the reason I am bringing this up is because the people who create and manage the marketing for the Batman franchise are amazing at what they do. They have created two of the greatest campaigns I have ever witnessed. They find new and interesting ways to get the fans involved and reward them for their participation.

Back in 2007 when marketing for The Dark Knight kicked off with the viral marketing campaign with the fictional political campaign of Harvey Dent by using the caption, “I Believe in Harvey Dent.” Users went to a website to show their support for the fictional District Attorney for Gotham City. Soon after they launched a vandalized version of the website done by The Joker called, “I Believe in Harvey Dent too.” From their emails were sent out to have fans interact by submitting pictures to slowly reveal a photo of The Joker.

The marketing campaign gained momentum at Comic-Con 2007 where a scavenger hunt lead fans to unlock a teaser trailer for the film and a new photo of The Joker. Soon they would kick this scavenger hunt off worldwide and allow people to submit pictures of themselves as The Joker to receive a copy of the fictional The Gotham Times. On February 2008 they would kick off an I Believe in Harvey Dent tour where tour buses would travel worldwide to promote Dent’s candidacy for district attorney.

Marketing for The Dark Knight Rises kicked off in May of last year when the official website was launched. Users were greeted by an audio file of chanting and were encouraged to tweet the link. When enough people promoted the website a pixel of an image was removed until is officially revealed the films villain Bane. Next various magazine companies would receive CIA documents concerning a "Dr. Leonid Pavel.” If you went to see Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in IMAX then you were able to watch the first six minutes of the film linking to those leaked CIA documents.

Now with the current viral campaign on its way one can only imagine what it will lead to. In all honestly it really doesn't matter because these two campaigns have been amazing thus far. I have never seen such dedication from people to unlock or take part in events then I have with the marketing for The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises. The folks at Warner Brothers have really out then themselves time and time again. Also, I have yet to see anyone really come close to what they have done.