The Blair Witch Project

Hollywood has deceived us. The Blair Witch Project was an early buzz creator. The product was a faux documentary that created an online buzz of "What is this? Did this really happen?" There is a lot of speculation that the so called "fan sites" that sprung up around the movie were actually planted by the filmmakers and the studio as a guerilla marketing tactic. In July of 1999, Salon.com published "Did 'The Blair Witch Project' fake its online fan base?" The article is outing studios for faking online fan sites in order to create buzz around their new releases. I find it amazing that it was not that long ago that people had so much trust in online content and that there was almost shock in the fact that something like this could happen.

Before it was released, the BWP had a number of fan sites, a web ring, a mailing list and more. The sites created faux content that investigated the scene, interviewed towns people about the event, search party stories and even missing signs. The buzz was moving all over the Internet and media outlets started to pick up the story. MTV ran a story on it giving it the stamp of approval that the desired demographic needed. A one-hour special had regular time on the sci-fi channel until the release. All of these actions resulted in the BWP breaking box office records and created a whole new era in internet marketing. Or did they? Five years later and another movie has yet to come close to the same success.

Here is some incite from Harry Knowles, proprietor of the Ain't-It-Cool Website. Asked whether Hollywood's post-Blair Web epiphany meant that history would soon repeat itself, Knowles noted the Web happened to be a perfect match for the subject matter and style of the Blair Witch Project. "That," he said simply, "was a one-off."

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