I'm a huge fan of practical examples and I would encourage you whatever you're
studying, whatever you're interested in to try to actually go out and find real
world examples of people who have done this and follow their case studies.
So I think a very interesting case study to talk about today would be a project
that we did in between Batman Begins and The Dark Knight called Why So Serious.
As you might imagine, when you work with an IP as valuable as Batman,
that there's a lot of care taken with the world.
The voice of the characters, where you're asking people to do.
And so, we knew we had to do something that would be not only establishing
trust with the audience, saying Yes, we know what your expectations are.
We know what you really want to do and we're going to deliver on that.
But also showing to the stakeholders,
we know what you need to achieve, we know what your goals are.
So the first thing we did was super important, it sets the right tone with
the audience and there are also reinforces your commitment to the stakeholders
that you're going to deliver on what it is that you're going to do.
So the way that we started, we obviously, we came in,
we read the script, amazing script.
And the two questions that we asked ourselves, and
one of them I talked about earlier, is well, what do people expect?
If I told you we're gonnas create a multiple platform,
multiple touch point experience that took you from the last frame of
Batman Begins to the first frame of the Dark Knight, what would someone say?
Well, I would expect to do this, or I would expect to do that.
So what were people's' expectations?
And then the second was what role could the audience have?
And we talked about that being a citizen of Gotham City.
And I get to actually live in the world, and I can affect the world, and
I can do things that happen in the world.
So interestingly enough, and this may sound particularly crazy
in retrospect, But we started looking at what is the buzz,
what is the conversation, what are people talking about,
about this film this coming up, The Dark Knight and this was a couple years up.
And people were one of the most polarizing things that people are talking about
was the casting of Heath Ledger as the joker.
Seems incredulous to him now because he was such an amazing performer.
But people were very vocal on the boards.
There are lots of superhero forums and we went on all of them to say,
what is the current conversation?
Where we starting from?
What's the mood of the audience?
And people are very conflicted.
Everything from Jack Nicholson was the best joker of all time to how could
Heath Ledger, coming off the critical success of Brokeback Mountain,
play one of the most iconic villains of all time in the Batman Universe.
So we knew that we had to do something that not only hit the tone right with
those very vocal superhero fans and
reinforced to them that this is going to be okay guys,
this going to be something that you're going to want to be involved in.
But also change that conversation point because that was seen as a hurdle for
the studios like how do we get over this, but we knew that the power
of the audience could change that conversation, just how do we let them in?
So the way that we attempted to do that, and
this was the first of thousands of touch points, but there
was a very simple website with a bat icon on it.
That was all that was really advertised in the film.
So we put a little blip on that website.
And if you clicked on it, it took you to a site that said, I believe in Harvey Dent.
And there was a campaign poster for
Harvey Dent that was being announced as being played by Aaron Eckhart,
good looking guy, great poster, the site that look made sense.
It seemed like it was announcing his casting.
At the same time, in a dozen comic book stores all around the country,
we dropped cards, Joker cards that were stamped
ha ha ha and I believe in Harvey Dent too, to YOLO.
And of course the beauty of doing something that is digitally connected
is that only one person has to find it.
So of course,
someone immediately finds one of these cards they upload it to the Internet.
They actually found four.
They said what do you think this is about.
The community immediately starts that investigative work.
They find, they go to a website I believe in Harvey Dent too,
they see the same campaign poster, but this time the joker has tagged it.
So he's tagged the eyes, he's tagged the mouth, and
it says if you want your vote to really count, give me your email.
And people were immediately responsive, people were like, what is this?
What could this possibly be?
It's obviously for Batman, this is the same poster.
So they start putting their email in, and they put their email in and
they got back an email that gave them an X and Y coordinate.
They went back to the site, they put their X and Y coordinate in and
it removed one pixel.
So over the course of 20 hours they were able to convince all
their friends and their entire social networks to go on and
put their email and remove a pixel but that wasn't enough.
So then they had to go on boards and social networks and try to reach out
to people in the press and the story just kept building and building and building
because they realized that underneath this campaign poster was an image.
And it was actually the very first image of Heath Ledger in Joker makeup.
And they wanted this particular picture to get out because this was the picture That
would establish that character in just the right tone.
So over this weekend, everyone works together,
they reveal this image, and they are astounded because it is an amazing image.
You can see it.
It still has impact even now.
Even after we've seen his performance it's just an amazing photograph.
And the conversation changed from
why do we cast him to wow, look at this character.
So that started a whole year and a half of people having this relationship
with this character, the Joker that really created the spine of that experience.
You didn't know what to expect.
You were learning about him as he related to you the audience.
And it was incredibly powerful and
it changed completely it changed the conversation.
And again it also proved to the stakeholders that the audience
could have a role in not only changing the conversation but
in building up the world.
That was going to be meaningful to them and ultimately meaningful for
a broader audience.