In marketing Man of Steel, Warner Bros. was looking to engage fans and build buzz while maintain authenticity with the world of the film and the franchise.
DEEP SPACE RADIO WAVE PROJECT
The Deep Space Radio Wave Project was a viral campaign that extended the Superman universe to fans within a unique narrative. It was meant to appear as a hobbyist website that captured radio waves from deep space.
The institutional-looking site was written about by press as the community speculated on what the unbranded site was promoting. For phase one, one day in December 2012 fans working together collectively decrypted radio signals to unlock a sequence of numbers in Kryptonian. Translated, these numbers provided longitude and latitude coordinates that comprised the URL upon which the first trailer launched.
Phase two occurred in April 2013. This time, the signals translated to the message, “YOU ARE NOT ALONE,” and launched the exclusive trailer that contained General Zod's message to Earth.
GLYPH CREATOR
The Glyph Creator invited fans to discover their ancestral Kryptonian house and name. After answering questions about their physical and moral qualities, the app aligned them with one of the twenty houses and provided that shield. Next, they received the Kryptonian translation of their names; which, true to the franchise, included their name and the name of their house. Fans could download, share and customize their creations, and submit them to the app's gallery.
We worked with the film's linguist on converting Earth names to Kryptonian, as well as the look of the alien alphabet. 3D and motion were used to carefully replicate the beautifully crafted visual effects in the film; in particular the metal interface and the unique "liquid metal" animation.
The film was a hit, earning more than $647 million worldwide.