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NerdBrand Podcast
Viral Marketing Magic: The Cloverfield Universe
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Welcome to the episode Cut.
Speaker 2:The Human Torch was approved for a bank loan.
Speaker 1:Welcome to this episode of the NerdBrand Podcast. It's number 250. Wee, we're going to be talking about the Nerd Brand Podcast. We are talking about viral marketing, and I'm joined today with Michaela and Mitch. Welcome to this episode of the Nerd Brand Podcast. We are talking about viral marketing and I'm joined today with Michaela. Hello, and Mitch, hello, and it's been a while and we've been out of the studio for a bit. Nope, I've been sitting here the whole time. Yeah Well, the jokes aside, I'm feeling the out of practice, at least on my end.
Speaker 3:Usually, when you do a show by yourself, it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1:You're like blah, blah blah blah, blah, cut, step, edit, publish. But do you ever feel crazy just talking to yourself? That's a good question, no, but it does. After a while I feel like. Is anyone listening?
Speaker 3:is anybody out there?
Speaker 2:as long as you're not answering yourself yeah, you know I'll come down, it's a very good question, Jason.
Speaker 3:Okay, Jason yeah.
Speaker 2:Jason, what do you think? I don't know, jason, what do you think?
Speaker 1:You know I do less voices and everything and maybe that's better for the audience, because they're like, yeah, you're terrible at it and I'm like, yeah, I've never been good at impressions, anyway, I don, so I can't do them I mean I?
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm not claiming to be the best impressionist but I don't have tonsils either.
Speaker 1:You can't do them. That's what I was told is that a science?
Speaker 3:is that a fact? I never knew?
Speaker 1:I was told that. I was told like your tonsils allow you to kind of modulate your well. I was also told that I was microchipped after I got my tonsillectomy microchip.
Speaker 3:Yes, and I believed that for quite some time like a pet. Yeah, my mom told me like oh yeah, while you were under, I told them to to chip you so when you go through airport or you know kroger checkout, do you go dude?
Speaker 3:no, it was all a fabrication. I had dinner with my aunt one time we were visiting in new jersey and I think I was like this was an ongoing thing for like several years I was probably 16 before that that damn broke and she, my aunt, who's like very smart, very much like kind of dry humor, not not too much into sense of humor, but like she's like michaela, you know she's just joshing you I'm like oh, yanking your chain is yes but I I guess it works because I wasn't the type of child to sneak out and get into mischief because I was under the impression that I was microchipped.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you didn't really tease your daughters at all when they were growing up, oh yeah, but I didn't tell them they were microchipped.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, I used to tell my little brothers that they were adopted. That's normal.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that one's a normal. I feel like I had that one too.
Speaker 2:That they were left on our doorstep in a basket. Yeah, that's pretty Like puppies.
Speaker 1:That's creative. Do you have a whole narrative, because it sounds like you did.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I won't go into it here, but yeah. I had a whole and of course, they were like three at the time, yeah, and they believed it Huh okay, did you find us in a basket on the front door?
Speaker 3:And then mom and dad's gotta find the birth certificate. Have some corroborating evidence. Why didn't you tell them?
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, siblings, I suppose, and aunts and moms and stuff. I don't think my parents ever did anything like that Because I was being an only child. I don't know. You're an only child, aren't you mckayla?
Speaker 1:no, I'm the youngest, you're the youngest okay, I got an older sister and an older brother well, I think we just answered the fact about how comfortable I am about sitting in a basement talking to myself. You're just used to it. Yeah, it's normal day for me anyways. Viral marketing. There is this expansive universe that many of us don't know about called Cloverfield, and the Cloverfield universe was viral marketing genius. This is before Marvel. I probably need to go look at the dates, but I mean, this is pretty old.
Speaker 2:The single digit odds.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was. I can't really recommend you watch the movie to our listeners and, michaela, I can't say that to you too, because it's one of those handheld video type things. There's a lot of people that got sick.
Speaker 3:So I noticed that because when we were watching, kind of like a little recap, just before we started recording, it kind of gave me like paranormal activity vibes.
Speaker 1:Like where it's that kind of like a camera operation. It was very much like Blair Witch. Do you remember that?
Speaker 3:yeah, kind of that one. And then, uh, I think this one movie came out whenever I was in high school, but it was called unfriend me and it was all webcam yeah, yeah, I remember that one.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've watched that because I was like huh, it's a Facebook thing. That's what I thought kind of.
Speaker 3:But when I see a man's hand in a blender because it's a dare or else everyone else dies, it's just, it gets a little grim yeah, it was like hostile, hostile meets, you know I'm getting saw, yeah, yeah flashbacks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So anyways, uh, cloverfield is about a monster that comes out of the water and wreaks havoc on new york. Um, there was, the first appearance of it was during a transformers. Um, I guess it was during when transformers was playing in the theater, if you went out to see transformers, and so, um, definitely single odds, because they released transformers live action, the first one in 2005, I think.
Speaker 3:Um they tried.
Speaker 1:They tried to coincide it with the anniversary of the animated movie, but they missed it by like two years. It might be 2007, actually.
Speaker 2:I think Cloverfield came out in 2008. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So it was definitely 2007 when you would see the trailer, because that's when Transformers came out. 2005 would have been the actual anniversary of Transformers, the animated movie, but I digress, I digress, yeah. So all you? 2005 would have been the actual anniversary of Transformers, the animated movie, but I digress, I digress, I digress, yeah. So all you got was the Statue of Liberty's head flying past the screen. You're like the crap, is this? And then the roar. And then you're like okay. And so everybody was like is this Godzilla, are we doing?
Speaker 3:Godzilla Is it Godzilla, it's Godzilla.
Speaker 1:Godzilla and no, it was not, but it was very much in the vein of that. I mean, jj Abrams bad robot. The director is an I don't want blanking out here Mitch, but it's Goddard. Yes, thank you, drew Goddard, he's amazing. And then you have one of the other producers. Jj Abrams friend is the guy that did the Batman and he also did Planet of the apes, and so that director is also a part of this um franchise, if you will.
Speaker 1:But I think at the beginning they didn't think franchise and so um. Later on you had um a connection to the show lost, which was very interesting, because this thing connected to lost and lost was a weird show where I don't know if y'all ever saw it or anything. It's one of those. If you're able to go back and watch lost, you're going to be hooked, for it's like a game of thrones, but on an island and everybody keeps their clothes on um and kind of like a lord of the flies which is ironic, really considering the climate yeah, um, yeah, it's sort of a mystery island, like what's on it?
Speaker 1:what's causing this? Where are they at, like you know? So there's, um, the cloverfield conspiracy is out there, but it's like, uh, there's different products. There's slusho, which is a drink, and, um, there's often these fake products in films, in quentin, tarantino films, there's some cigarette brand, orange, something or other. So they kind of do that. So that's an actual product, and it appeared in the show Lost the slusho machines, and so that's where they were like, oh, this is in Cloverfield universe because there's slusho there.
Speaker 2:To me it's more of an Abrams thing than it is a Cloverfield thing. Yeah, it is more of an Abrams thing than it is a Cloverfield thing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. I would agree Abrams likes to do these little Easter eggs like that and it may have nothing to do with it, but he's like okay.
Speaker 2:It's misdirection that keeps people interested, it piques their interest and gets people to investigate, and hang on to it and then wait with bated breath for the next iteration to come out so they can see where the threads connect and in the they don't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it didn't really, but it did build up the momentum to cloverfield uh, 10 cloverfield lane, and that's how everybody was like, oh, this is a sequel, because it's 10 cloverfield right lane right, and john goodman is in it and he's terrifying and the nuragatu company is the company that makes slusho, it's also the company that does another company that's drilling and his character worked there and and so it's very conspiracy theory. So you kind of get this vibe that his character and John Goodman is amazing in the film and he is terrifying and then just switches tone immediately.
Speaker 1:That's what makes him so terrifying, yeah, and so he has a daughter. And so they started putting together all these websites online where you can go and visit them. They're all offline right now. I checked because for this episode I was going to bring them up, we were going to chat about them, but they're all offline right now.
Speaker 1:And, uh, but at the end of the day it was like there was this, like you can go here, and there was just a picture and you couldn't tell what the picture was. But if you put in this password on this other website, the picture actually has a message contained in it and you can actually get the message. And it's a weird thing in space, a picture of a thing orbiting earth, and that's what it was. So john goodman's character had that. And so in 10 cloverfield lane, yeah, there's aliens and, uh, you know she fights them and they float in the air, so it's not like the Cloverfield monster, but apparently from the same thing. And then you fast forward to there were rumors of what was called the God Particle, but it actually wasn't. It was the Call of the Cloverfield Paradox, which is on Netflix. So you have Matt Reeves. That was the director I was thinking of. Yeah, drew Goddard was the writer, sorry, right. Yeah, matt Reeves is the. That was the director I was thinking of.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Drew Goddard was the writer, sorry.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, yeah. And so you know you start looking at the Cloverfield movies and you have like, well, what other movies? And see, there's Cloverfield Paradox and that was on. That was a Netflix release and it surprised everybody during Super Bowl released and it surprised everybody during super bowl. They don't really announce. These is my point, like the viral marketing. They throw this stuff out and it's like surprise and it's out like you don't even know it's coming. So the viralness of this is the online stuff. If those websites go back up and it's like holy crap, it's coming, something's up, something's up, you know. So they kind of market it that way, which is pretty ingenious. Um, and it it builds excitement. So now the rumor is there's another one coming anytime.
Speaker 3:What like? Do we know when?
Speaker 1:this year is the rumor that sometime this year it could be between now and before the end, so they don't even do like trailer.
Speaker 3:Well, they don't do trailers. No what? Yeah because I remember the 10, because I was. When did 10 Cloverfield Lane come out? I remember that one in 2000. The first one I was like nine 2016. I was a wee lad but I was in high school when this one came out, so I remember this one a little bit. I know this is dating me Stop.
Speaker 1:It's also dating me and Mitch. We're sitting here going like.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying a word Mary Elizabeth Winstead.
Speaker 1:That's who the other co-star was in the film. I mean, it's a terrifying thriller.
Speaker 2:I think I like her in just about everything she's done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah 2016.
Speaker 2:Most people don't have the time and attention span.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 2:Unless you're a hardcore nerd like us. Yeah, to dig that deep, yeah, I.
Speaker 1:I wonder if they, if it actually that the concept for the viral campaign maybe worked against them a little bit well, you know, when you go on to imdb you can kind of see the popularity of it, the rating, and you kind of get an idea that it's to your point. It's a slow burn. When this came out nobody knew about it because of the way that it was marketed. But as things went along and as the word of mouth spread, that changed. Right. Well, for the first movie anyway. Yeah, for the first movie. And then using that first movie is how they built up. I was trying to see if they had any numbers on um production and marketing or other other other sites maybe down a little bit more on the budget box office yeah there it is.
Speaker 1:I want to grab that's first time that that's another um company. Yeah, good call. Thank you, michaela. $25 million is the estimated budget for this thing. Opening weekend it did $40 million.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow.
Speaker 1:And so its gross US and Canada was $80, and worldwide was $172. Not bad for an hour and 25 minute handheld movie. That was $25 million. That came out that really nobody really knew about, other than that one teaser that we saw the head with during the Transformers movie. Knew about other than that one teaser that we saw the head with, uh during the transformers movie. However, if you go to uh one of the other ones, when they go to cloverfield 10, cloverfield lane, which, um, I've got to fight ads now, pardon, pardon, pardon, we're getting there boop, there we go.
Speaker 1:I want to kind of make sure like, uh yeah, we're not going to open that website. Don't open any of the links, people, that you find on these websites that we're talking about by the way, not the droids you're looking for yeah, seriously, you'll be like I got a virus, like, yeah, it's okay, you know, don't, don't click on anything past that.
Speaker 1:Um, let's see how 10 chlorophyll lane stacked up all right now. It was made for 15 million. It opened at 24, so it opened at almost closely what the first budget was for the first film. That's wild, ain't it. And then it grossed worldwide 110.
Speaker 1:So it did far less, but it was made for almost made its money back for sure yeah, so these are films that know we talk about Marvel films being $200 million, marketing being $150. These are like their effort to show that you can make good films cheaper, right, and I think that's just the point, and, sadly, it cuts out a lot of the marketing, but it also reduces their potential for revenue, though. So the theory is, yes, cut back on production costs, not the marketing, but it also reduces their potential for revenue, though. So the theory is yes, cut back on production costs, not the marketing, because the marketing is going to drive the revenue. I don't know if that lesson has been caught. Let's find out with cloverfield paradox and go into that.
Speaker 1:So, in 2018, this came out. Hour 42 Surprised everybody at the Super Bowl during that year, and then it came out. Netflix launched it. It was streaming only and was going to be called the God Particle and, by the way, paramount Studios was attached to this, so we all know kind of what's going on with Paramount right now.
Speaker 3:Right.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't look like they have any of that stuff listed. They had the budget, but they don't have.
Speaker 2:There is no box office, so how do you determine how much money it made it was?
Speaker 1:streaming only. Yeah Right, so it was $45 million to make this one. So you have to think about like okay, well, they did the Super Bowl ad, so that's expensive. We all know those are what Like $4 million a pop. So you know, you got that at least, but anything else I couldn't. There's no record, it's hard, it's very obfuscated.
Speaker 2:So, anyways, now we're going to have another one. What do?
Speaker 1:you all think Somebody say yeah, yeah, the rumor which I think we saw, that 13-minute one which is the, whatever it was called, the Cloverfield Files, which there is. Files mean in the cloverfield movie, the spoiler alert, the guy and the girl die, the main characters they're kind of huddled. Nuclear bomb goes off, and but how did we get this record of this film? Well, this is government video, right?
Speaker 1:so there are files, so it is something that um kind of keeps going. Um is this, uh, is this for you all, even with your like? Is this anything like you would sit and watch through all of these in sequence? Is this something you guys because I know it sounds like you guys have not seen them I mean, Mitch, you've seen a couple.
Speaker 2:Well, I've seen 10 Cloverfield. I've seen Cloverfield but I didn't watch the Cloverfield Paradox because the reviews were so mediocre and there's so much content to watch. I have to because of my time availability. I've got to be a little bit sort of picky about when I'm going to spend time watching. So I passed on it, but I'll probably see it eventually.
Speaker 3:I know you have some of your guilty pleasures that are not necessarily good movies.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other conversation. I'm a huge B-movie fan, for movies starting all the way back to the 30s, up into the 80s, even in the early 90s, back when the video store boom was and they were churning out, yeah, direct-to-video movies like every five seconds.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I like some of the best bad movies, yeah I mean and this is like you know, movies for people listening, this is a product, this is a studio that's making something. It's like whatever you do for your business and you make, you sell, you got to get your money back on. So these lessons are very they do correlate to whatever you're working on. So if you're making and selling beer syrup which is a thing- oh, I've heard of it yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, you've got different flavors, you got different things. It's the on a small scale smaller scale.
Speaker 2:There's definitely viral lessons here. I mean, like I said, my thinking is that a lot of this? If there was an intention with the Cloverfield brand, if you will, to really create a brush fire of viral interest, I'm not sure they succeeded because of how thinly attached, how thin and how granular the attachments are from film to film, Because most people I'm not counting nerds like us, most people aren't going to spend the time and the energy to try to connect these threads. You can't make it that hard for people to go along, yeah I mean, yeah, it does.
Speaker 1:It becomes very difficult um a lot of the films. That kind of um cabin in the woods is good cabin.
Speaker 2:I just saw the image. Yeah, well, that was.
Speaker 1:that was one of the films that was sort of like why wasn't this a cloverfield film? Another one was Life Arrival. I'm kind of glad they didn't with those, because Life was not great.
Speaker 2:It sounds funny to say that.
Speaker 1:It's just not great. I'm sorry Arrival of Life was not great. Arrival was actually very good. I liked it. It was a good film. Almost said the dirty word and you know, with Overlord I was like, if you just put the Cloverfield name in it and that's what I mean by brand and emphasizing that on this conversation if that had been in there it would have helped. It would have helped, because then now you're saying yes, it's a part of it. When you exclude it and say, no, it's its own standalone thing. It's sort of like there's just rare moments that happens Brightburn, for example, with Sony. That's what if Superman was a murderous, psychopathic alien?
Speaker 2:I really need to go back and watch that.
Speaker 1:That's one of those ones I keep thinking to go back and yeah, but at the end of the day day we got another one coming up. So it's going to be interesting to see on the viral marketing and what they're going to do. You know, this even includes out-of-home advertisements. This could be billboards, this could be signage at stop signs, this could be just about anything. I mean, it's something that to kind of watch. I mean it's not been done in a minute.
Speaker 1:Um, deadpool did it. Amazingly, if Deadpool and Chlorophyll were comparison of each other of viral marketing, deadpool was the one saying hold my beer For sure, yeah, and they tried to duplicate that three more times, or two more times at least, and it didn't. Really, it's hard to capture lightning in a bottle like that. Again. But anyways, viral marketing, if that's your approach and that's something you want to go down, you got to be prepared. It's very audience specific. It's very difficult to get that audience to and then retain them if you're going to keep them, if you're going to keep producing things. So but anyways, we, I recommend you watch Cloverfield. I recommend you kind of dive into the Cloverfield conspiracy. Go out and watch overlord and tell us what you think and, um, yeah, again, you'll definitely get an experience. But if you go google the trailers and everything else. You can kind of see what we're talking about and that that whole world war ii, alternate reality kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sci-fi is sort of a sub-genre yeah, it is enough, there's another one called um frankenstein's army, yeah, which kind of takes a similar, I mean sort of similar, semi-similar strategy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but I you know, this is a way that I wish the websites were online to go through, because they were very interesting. One website was John Goodman, his character. He made a website for his daughter so he could communicate with her and there was a password you had to figure out to unlock it so you can actually read his letters to her, and some of the content of the letters would have been neat to go through on the show. If I had them I would have. But again the site's down and uh. But he's writing to her and he's kind of letting her know that while he worked for the company, what he saw, what happened, and so it's sort of like a very edward snowden type of thing that went on with what he did, or wiki leaks, rather, and um oh yeah, I mean, yeah, it definitely played on that theme yeah, it did, it did, but it did it really really well.
Speaker 1:That's the thing. If you're going to do viral marketing, do it well, otherwise don't do it at all, because if you don't do it well, it bombs bad what's really funny is the Monarch organization in the new.
Speaker 2:Godzilla King Kong universe. It plays a little bit on that whole hidden government secrets and secret government organization.
Speaker 1:It's trying to tie it together. It's trying to do a Marvel Cinematic Universe thing, Like it's all connected. They've been pretty successful too.
Speaker 2:I think every movie they've made so far has made decent money. Yeah, and the TV show on Apple Apple plus is actually Apple TV plus is actually pretty good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've been noticing that. I really enjoyed it. Well, anyways, if you enjoy this episode of the nerd band podcast, be sure to like, subscribe, do all the things you know what to do and, uh, we hope you enjoyed this 250th episode and I'm glad to have some people back on the show. Thank you, Michaela, for coming back, yay.
Speaker 3:You're welcome.
Speaker 1:Michaela will be making some more appearances. We'll maybe be trying out a different format and getting back to video. We'll see how it goes. Anyways, yeah, thanks for listening. Tune in next week. Keep your nerd brain strong.
