THE RUINS - Viral Marketing

Even though I am not a fan of horror films, I wanted to mention the viral campaign that is currently online to promote THE RUINS.

The campaign is similar to the Dexter and Breaking Bad viral campaigns, and I always think they are fun.

This time around however, they went a step further by having the character actually dying in the video... did I mention The Ruins is a horror movie? Pretty controversial, right?

Here is the press release for more information:

The viral campaign revolves around a fictional biologist called Alex Hamilton ‘The Human Lab Rat’ who documents the latest experiment on his body - growing a parasitic vine under his skin. To create authenticity to the campaign Ralph created profiles for Alex on Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and YouTube which features a series of videos and blog entries created by Alex from his recent travels around Europe to the time he was cut by the vines in Mexico.

Online communities will be directed to a viral prank featuring Alex documenting his experiment on Justin.tv. Visitors to www.justin.tv/humanlabrat will watch a ‘live’ video of Alex interacting with viewers in real time through chat. Viewers encourage him to show the vine moving and growing rapidly under his skin. The footage ends with a horrified Alex dying live in front of viewers. The trailer of the film is then shown and recipients are given an opportunity to send their friends the prank video.

And now head out to justin.tv/humanlabrat to check out the video for yourself. It's a pretty freaky experience!

The Ruins comes out on April 4, 2008.