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Before Christmas we began work on a particularly challenging project for Paramount to promote Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones.

Without giving away any aspects of the plot, the film presents the viewer with a magical place between heaven and earth known as The In Between. Jackon’s vision includes awe-inspiring vistas of the In Between and we wanted to promote these whilst also asking the public to suggest their own vision of the In Between through the submission of user-generated content.

How it works

The site, Experience The In Between, features a number of breath-taking images from the In Between. However upon closer inspection, each one is in fact a user-generated ‘photo-mosaic’, made up of thousands of individual photos uploaded by people from all over the world, to show the memories they would hope to find in their own personal In Between.

Photos can be uploaded from your desktop, or through your Facebook or Flickr account. For anyone who doesn’t have a photo to submit, we have worked with Flickr to integrate its API so anyone can submit a photo from Flickr’s Creative Commons pool.

As more photos get uploaded, more of the vista will be revealed. And after three weeks and thousands of images added, the experience is really enjoyable for all.

Here at PPC Interactive, we’ve just put together a new, mind-blowing fan kit for Paramount’s GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra. This, our all-encompassing fan site, allows you to ally with either Joe or Cobra through a variety of creative content; create profile pics, get skins for Twitter, Myspace and Bebo, quiz yourself on Joe trivia, access downloads for your desktop, sign up to news alerts, and embed a variety of personalised applications into your social network, blog or website. Phew!

Be sure to catch GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra in cinemas 7 August

Universal and PPC Interactive are pleased to present Bank Raids, the online game which challenges you to match John Dillinger for criminal ambition, by recruiting gang members, knocking over banks and accumulating weapons, money and fast cars on your way to becoming Public Enemy No. 1.

Using Facebook Connect, users can integrate their Facebook accounts into game-play — log in, save your progress and recruit your friends to your gang. When you finish playing, you can automatically post updates to Facebook and Twitter, sharing exploits as your notoriety rises, including how many banks you’ve robbed and how much money you’ve stolen. We’re also one of the first companies to incorporate Facebook Connect into the wide and wonderful world of social gaming.

Facebook Connect shows significant potential for film marketing as it enables us to enhance a game like Bank Raids for Facebook users without the need to create a separate Facebook application.

For more info, Mashable wrote a particularly great piece about Bank Raids earlier this month.

We’re incredibly excited about Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, so much so that we built this massive mothership of Transformers content for users to access and share across the social web!

Paramount Pictures International and The Picture Production Company have launched a new Transformers website ‘Choose Your Side’ – a fan site in which invites visitors to make the age old choice between good and evil, expressing their allegiance to either Autobots or Decepticons, through a variety of creative and compelling content including site skins for Twitter, Myspace and Bebo, desktop downloads and a profile pic creator. The ‘transmitter’ and ‘banner builder’ are two personalised applications that you can embed on your social network, blog or site to log in to all the newest info on the film and its happenings.

Which side will you choose? …

We have been working hard on the interactive campaign for ‘How to Lose Friends & Alienate People’ over the past couple of months. The title and the original book immediately made us think ‘what can we do on Facebook?’

One brainstorm later and we had ‘Anti-Social Networking’ – an application that allows you to insult your friends, rank them by their ‘crapness’, vandalise their profile pictures and even cheat at Scrabble.

From a marketer’s point of view, the application works two-fold. It envisages how the film’s protagonist, Sidney Young, would use Facebook, whilst also providing an enjoyable and engaging ‘game’ for anyone on Facebook. This is why Paramount jumped at the idea.

One week after launch and the public reaction has been just as exciting. Following a sneak preview of the application, Mashable (thanks Stan and Pete) wrote a glowing review and it has subsequently been mentioned in Popbitch, Lifehacker and The Daily Telegraph to name a few.

Welcome to the advent of Anti-Social Networking; or “Perfection in Viral Marketing” (Pete Cashmore, Mashable.com)

UPDATE - Anti-Social Networking has been awarded Runner-up in September’s IAB Creative Showcase. 

Our campaign for UNTRACEABLE is now nearing a frenzied conclusion, after several weeks of subversive online marketing activity culminating in Facebook’s decision to shut down our KILL WITH ME page on the basis that it is “hateful”, “threatening” and/or “obscene”.

If it receives over 10,000 visits between now and Friday we’re going to show the entire first 10 minutes of the film.

For the best overall analysis of the campaign I recommend a piece by Jemima Kiss on The Guardian’s website, and we’ve also picked up some great coverage on METRO. It’s going to be great to watch the digital footprint of this activity grow leading up to the release on Friday.

Coming just a couple of days out from release, this reinforces how important and integrated a part of the marketing mix online publicity has become.

UPDATE (01/03/2008): Collated here for posterity, here is some of the coverage we’ve generated leading up to the UK’s opening weekend:

Consumer

• Total Film
• Guardian
• National Post
• IGN
• Yahoo!
• Metro
• IMDB
• AMC
• Dose
• Cinema Blend
• Splatter Films
• Movie Snobs
• Contact Music
• Eye for Film

Blogs

• Movie Marketing Madness
• AdFreak
• Cinematical
• globeandmail.com – Ingram 2.0
• Indie London
• 20/20
• Defamer
• Spout
• Jossip
• BuzzTracker
• fvrit
• The Bad and Ugly
• Arrow in the Head
• Horrorthon
• FearNet
• Emanuel Levy
• p2pnet
• allfacebook – The Unofficial Facebook Blog
• Facebook Trending
• Watching TV Online
• Peter Buick
• Lewis 360

Trade

• Variety
• Brand Republic
• Marketing Week
• Contagious Magazine
• mad.co.uk
• UTalkMarketing.com
• Digital Media Wire
• ITVX
• FilmFestivals.com

This is our latest grabbable media player, promoting Warner Bros’ international release of BEOWULF. It is being localised for us in over 40 key markets, but the English language version is already available to grab at www.beowulfplayer.com.

We made The Killer App to promote Fox’s movie Hitman. Become a hitman, read the brief, scope your target and take your shot.

Facebook application allowing you to send creepy notes to your friends, to promote Disturbia.

We created a Facebook, blog and MySpace compatible Film Factory widget, that can be updated with relevant content.