QUICK TAKE - 'Silent House' digital marketing campaign: Are audiences listening?

(Movie poster, Photo source: IMP Awards)

Open Road Films / Liddell Entertainment’s horror film Silent House utilized three key elements in its digital marketing campaign: a mysterious official site, an interactive trailer and portal, and a Twitter contest mirroring the film’s real-time continuity.

Opening on March 9, the R-rated Silent House was inspired by true events and a remake of the Uruguayan Spanish-language film The Silent House (La Casa Muda), which was met with mostly positive reviews. At last year's Sundance Film Festival, this remake was also one of the two films headlined by Elizabeth Olsen; her breakthrough performance in the other film Martha Marcy May Marlene won universal acclaim, was nominated by a barrage of critics associations, and instantly propelled Olsen as a future star to watch.

The Devil Inside and The Woman In Black scared up $33.7 and $20.9 million openings, respectively
(Photo source: IMP Awards)

With two horror films, The Devil Inside and The Woman In Black, opening to large numbers in January and February, respectively, and receiving middling to downright nasty CinemaScores, one wonders if moviegoers are currently suffering from disappointing-horror films fatigue or are only hungrier for scares that deliver.

Is Silent House’s digital marketing campaign loud enough to get audiences screaming for tickets? Let’s take a look.


1. Whyisthishappeningtome.net

Silent House's official website

Heavily branded in Silent House’s marketing on Twitter, Facebook, and the end of its trailer, the URL Whyisthishappeningtome.net leads to a dark and moody website that features scattered Polaroids with clues written on them, a pool of dark liquid (presumably blood), and ominous background music playing.

On Target: The question in the URL rouses up feelings of fear, which is bound to attract more hits than a standard movie-title moniker.

Upon visiting the atmospheric website, there isn’t much to do except look at the Polaroids and notice the broken up words and syllables written under each one. One can't help thinking if there's something that should be done here.

A link to hashtag #whyisthishappeningtome is provided below, possibly to encourage Tweeters to figure out the mystery together.

Little is known about the film's plot so this enigmatic website encourages people to put themselves in the mystery and try to figure it out. By not making the game overly simple (like last summer’s Don’t Be Afraid of The Dark’s locate three items to unlock the basement), players will have the film on their mind as they spend time solving the case and interacting with others for help.


Missed Opportunity?: Unless a film has a vocal and established fan base (usually those derived from an entertainment property, such as The Dark Knight and Tron), trying to release a puzzle resembling one in an alternate reality game can muster up frustration, confusion, and indifference more than intrigue. Fans of the original Uruguayan film were not exactly clamoring for an English-remake.

I’m not sure if Whyisthishappeningtome.net was different when it was previously launched, but I was perplexed at the lack of perceived content. Most people would not spend time trying to piece together the clues unless they had strong interest in the film or premise.

The majority of hashtag tweets were unrelated to Silent House

Since the hashtag is general and isn’t solely Silent House’s, it can easily be hijacked. A quick roundup of the hashtag brings up tweets about insomnia, headaches, sore throats, and daily frustrations than chatter about the film.

The film is touted as “inspired by true events” and according to box office history, audiences get the heebie-jeebies when they believe it has happened to someone (no matter how loosely the film is based on facts).

Newspaper clipping from The Devil Inside official site's Rossi Files section

With only a few Polaroids, the website is sparse; exploiting the “inspired by” source and playing it up with newspaper clippings, news reports, photos (even if they are fabricated) will provide content for visitors to stick around, delve into, and become more consumed by the story. For the diehards, the clues to unlocking any rewards can be planted within here.

Having a straightforward official website with content would be helpful in addition to a portion or secondary site devoted to a mysterious game for those who wanted to play.


2. We All Have Secrets

Personalized intro clip featuring your Facebook info

Piecing together the clues spell out www.we-all-have-secrets.com, which directs to an interactive site where one has to login with their Facebook account; a lengthy clip from the film then plays featuring one's friends’ names and pictures. (This secret site has now been promoted publicly by Silent House’s social media networks.)

After the clip finishes, the visitor is led to a portal where one can share and submit their secrets anonymously.

On Target: When done effectively and in an appropriate way, immersing the viewer into the film builds an emotional connection and would emulate the same chilly experience Olsen’s character is going through.

Share your secret

The secrets wall hints there is more underlying terror in the film than just a haunted house. Aiming to have people connect with each other anonymously and feel they are not alone in having skeletons in their closets (though I hope not literally!), this interactive site looks to bridge a positive association with the film, especially with the more socially inclined 17-34 female audience who makes up the majority of the horror audience.


Missed Opportunity?: Having one’s friends show up in the film clip can be creepy except it doesn’t make sense within the context; why is one's friend’s name popping up randomly on Olsen's cell phone? Just because an enhanced experience can be created doesn’t mean it should be when it baffles.

Additionally, one cannot bypass the lengthy film clip, which is not a trailer and looks like it gives many scares away. It can turn potential ticket-buyers off who despise spoilers.

After solving the Whyisthishappeningtome.net Polaroid jigsaw, the secrets wall is anti-climatic and an uneventful letdown.

The wall of secrets can be a good idea for anonymous engagement and may garner more activity if it was visually appealing. Having to scroll through flash pages of unmoderated and incoherent text entries (with nothing juicy) is not user-friendly, inviting, or interesting.

As evident by the explosive growth of Pinterest, people are visual creatures.

Make the wall look arresting with a collage of secret-images, which users can upload directly via a Silent House mobile app. For example, Ingo ran a campaign last year where every fan who visited their Facebook page had their profile picture become part of their logo, forming a mosaic.

Ingo logo made up of Facebook profile pictures (Photo source: Mashable)

The popular PostSecret blog and books created an app last September where users could submit images of their secrets; though they received thousands of submission, they were forced to shut down after three months due to a small group of people posting “malicious” content such as pornography and gore.

PostSecret app (Photo source: Mashable)

If it is too much work for Silent House to moderate the pictorial content, as it was for PostSecret, stick with the secret-texts but make the statements stand out. The page can be covered with rotating secrets that are clickable text-tags but with each tag highlighted at timed intervals so people can shift their attention to it; otherwise, there’s no focus and it becomes overwhelming with text.

People can also comment on secrets to reach out and support one another, and the Silent House Twitter account can drum up engagement by tweeting random secrets posted on the site daily and ask for retweets if one can relate to it or knows someone who can.


3. The 88 Minutes Retweet

One of Silent House’s tagline is “Experience 88 minutes of real fear captured in real time.”

To amplify the concept, their Twitter account began a weekly contest: after Silent House sent out a contest tweet, followers had 88 minutes to retweet it to win movie swag.

On Target: The 88 minutes campaign is a great way to connect the campaign with the film’s real-time concept and selling point; it also allows the fans to experience how painfully slow or fast the time goes by.

More importantly, it makes one wonder why 88 minutes, and become more curious about the plot.

On a similar note, The Hunger Games launched a clever Twitter contest with 24 city accounts vying for a chance to win advanced screening tickets, inspired by the novel’s 24-“tributes” fighting each other.

When there is thought put into a contest to tie it back to what it's promoting, it stands out; otherwise, people will simply submit an entry form or retweet, hope to win, and forget about the product.


Missed Opportunity?: While the 88 minutes time constraint is an excellent association to the film, the short entry time severely limits the number of entrants. It is alarming when only 20-some followers retweeted for the contest recently.

Perhaps the contest can be tweaked to allow more entrants: Silent House can send out a daily retweet contest with the specific hashtag #88MinutesOfFear, then randomly select groups of five RTers throughout the day, send a public tweet out with all five of their handles on it with no warning, and the first to “scream” back and reply wins the swag pack.

Inspired by Kraft Macaroni & Cheese’s Jinx campaign, this contest will keep Tweeters participating all day long, encourage more people to retweet and promote Silent House, and have entrants constantly checking the film's Twitter account to see if their name pops up.

Once a person is a near-miss on a contest win, they’ll be more alert for the next tweet from Silent House.


BONUS: Motion one-sheet

Click here to watch and hear the Silent House motion one-sheet

Released last Wednesday, the Silent House motion one-sheet, which adds a scream to a short clip of Olsen’s character reacting to something horrific, evokes much more chills than the stale still on the standard one-sheet.

Sometimes by keeping it short, simple, and not showing much is scarier than all the bells and whistles of putting your Facebook friends in a clip. The motion one-sheet is also embeddable and shareable.