Alternate Reality: Breaking the Bounds of Fiction

Alternate Reality is self-referential form of storytelling in which the story or "fiction" expands outside the frame of the story itself, and can create an illusion that the story itself is true. It can be as simple as telling campers around a fire that the ghost story you are about to tell them is not only true, but happened "somewhere around here", or it can be held up by a complex network of websites, social media, and live events.


In 1999, the world was introduced to The Blair Witch Project. The independent movie cost $60,000 to make, and grossed $248 million worldwide. It is a movie of arguable merit, but the thing that propelled it to a 1.5 million dollar opening weekend was the marketing campaign. The movie is about a group of film students who are investigating the urban legend of the Blair Witch, and meet unfortunate fates.
The marketing story which framed the movie was that the students actually DID go investigating the legend, and were never seen again. Months before the movie was released, "missing" flyers were put up near college campuses all across the country. Reportedly, the footage they shot was found, which of course is the movie itself. Many people went to the movie believing the fabricated marketing story, and that they were looking at real documentary footage.

In 2006, Lonelygirl15 created a series of "video blogs" on youtube. She created an immense crowd of loyal followers, who were furious when they discovered months later that Lonelygirl15 was actually a paid actress, and they had been watching a produced series of videos.

In 2008, the movie Cloverfield was released. It is a "Godzilla" type movie about a huge monster that comes from the sea and attacks New York City. Marketing for the movie began with a curious website for a product called "Slusho", a frozen beverage made from an ingredient that comes form deep within the sea. The website was registered in Japan (a .jp suffix, instead of .com) for added authenticity.

The name "Slusho" was a giveaway that the website was linked to J.J. Abrams, creator of the tv show  LOST. In discussion boards devoted to the still running television show LOST, such as 4815162342.com, discussions started popping up about the Slusho website, and how Slusho was a beverage featured in the first season of Alias, also created by Abrams.

When you poked around the Slusho website, you learned that a parent company, Tagruato, offering distribution opportunities in the united states. 

If you endeavored to go to the website listed in that text box (no live link was provided), you found out that Tagruato was in the business of drilling deep sea wells (the source of the fictional ingredient in the fictional beverage), and that a well was scheduled to open off the coast of New York City in September, 2007 (exactly one year prior to the release of the film Cloverfield).

Characters in the movie had myspace pages. A website called JamieandTeddy.com was launched (the password is “jllovesth”), and numerous other threads were created for persistent audiences to unravel.

Is that all confusing enough for you?

In Alternate Reality parlance, the Slusho webiste is called a "rabbit hole", in reference to the portal leading to another word in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The rabbit hole is the entry point for the audience to be introduced to the "meta-fiction", or the fictional story that frames ultimate product being sold, which in this case was the movie Cloverfield. For more J.J. Abrams shenanigans, check out the convoluted LOST Experience ARG (Alternate Reality Game)

I took my own shot at creating Alternate Reality Marketing when I was producing an independent haunted attraction on a farm in Virginia in 2009. In an homage to classic horror/sci fi films like The Blob and Night of the Living Dead, as well as one of my favorite television shows, the X-Files,  I created a story of a meteor that had struck the farm, releasing a virus that caused genetic mutations and revived the dead.

I started by shooting a short video of the actual meteor hit and posting it to youtube. It serves to introduce the story, and also provides driving directions to the farm. The hit counter is still very low (fewer than 700 view as of this writing), which points to the importance of marketing your rabbit hole!

I created a blog that was written by a fictional member of a fictional paranormal investigation group, PHRAWG. I also began created ads for the local newspaper that were designed to look like news stories:

To this day, the locals still talk about the marketing campaign. It was quirky, memorable, and fun. I am in the process of designing a new campaign for a 2013 Halloween event. Look for that post in November.