If “The Blair Witch Project” redefined viral marketing, it’s fair to say that “Paranormal Activity” perfected it. The film was also inexpensive, costing only $15,000 to produce. Seeing as it made over $193 million at the box office, it’s one of the most financially successful films ever. Still, it needed to draw people to movie theaters, and it did so via a unique strategy that involved showing people watching the movie.
The first step in marketing “Paranormal Activity” was to show it to people in a limited screening at the Screamfest horror film festival. The movie had a great premiere at Screamfest, with Katie Featherston winning best actress, but the best thing to come out of the festival was the audience reaction. As the film was generating a buzz for how scary it was, the marketing campaign created a trailer showing footage of people watching the movie, and it worked amazingly well. There are a few shots from the actual movie, but the focus of the trailer is on the audience — watching their reactions creates a tantalizing effect that makes the viewer want to see what could be so scary.
That was only one aspect of the campaign: The film’s website included a “Demand It” feature, where people could vote to have the movie shown in their city. Paramount was widely praised for its inventive marketing, with Entertainment Weekly saying that execs should “be commended for bringing a touch of old-school groundswell marketing to an age of knee-jerk, top-down media saturation.”
