The Marketing of the Cloverfield Films Is Hollywood Promotion at Its Finest

The Big Picture

• The Cloverfield franchise is known for its unique and diverse films, with each installment different from the last.
• The marketing strategies for the Cloverfield films were groundbreaking and unlike anything done before, utilizing viral campaigns and online scavenger hunts to engage viewers.
• While the marketing for The Cloverfield Paradox was a bold and unprecedented move, the film itself was not well-received, resulting in the strategy being less impactful.

The funny thing about the Cloverfield franchise is just how different each of the films is. 2008's Cloverfield is a found footage monster film, followed up by 10 Cloverfield Lane, a psychological thriller released in 2016. The Cloverfield Paradox is a science fiction horror film, released in 2018 on Netflix, that serves to explain the mythos that binds the three disparate films together. Whether it was successful in doing so is an argument for another time, but what they do share is a history of media-savvy marketing strategies that were unlike anything that had been done before. And like the films themselves, each campaign was unique.

'Cloverfield' Dropped a Teaser Without a Title

Close

The big film to beat in the summer of 2007 was Transformers, but even Michael Bay's bombastic Autobots vs. Decepticons spectacle took a back seat to the teaser trailer that played before it. There was no title or explanation. It began with a hand-held video camera capturing a house party, but sounds of utter chaos send the party-goers outside. What the camera catches next is one of those rare moments in film that instantly become iconic, with the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty rolling down the road, settling to a stop in front of the filmmaker. The footage stops there, and a release date, 1-18-08, pops up on the screen.

This had never been done before. Every trailer had to have, at a bare minimum, the title of the film, right? It was unsettling, not just because there was no context for what happened in the trailer, but also because the events of 9/11 were still very fresh in people's minds. Speculation was rampant. Some proposed that it was a new Godzilla film, married with The Blair Witch Project. One source speculated that it was a Voltron movie. It would be months before the title of the film was made public, with a second trailer shown before Beowulf. The teaser trailer was just the start, however, of a viral marketing campaign for the ages, an online scavenger hunt for the tech-savvy generation. Hints about the film could be found on multiple websites. There were MySpace pages for the characters, faux newscasts about trouble with a Japanese oil rig, and websites for fictional organizations and products, including Slusho (which has recently been reactivated, suggesting a new film may be on the way). It all added up to a kaiju film that put viewers right into the action with the protagonists, who became more than mere casualties along the way.

Cloverfield

PG-13

A group of friends venture deep into the streets of New York on a rescue mission during a rampaging monster attack.

Release Date

January 15, 2008

Director

Matt Reeves

Cast

Lizzy Caplan , Jessica Lucas , T.J. Miller , Michael Stahl-David , Mike Vogel , Odette Annable

Runtime

90

Main Genre

Action

Watch on Paramount+

'10 Cloverfield Lane' Replicated Its Predecessor's Success

January 2016. Another Michael Bay film, 13 Hours. Another teaser trailer. Unlike its predecessor, this trailer wasn't in the found-footage style. It opens on a jukebox playing "I Think We're Alone Now" before cutting to three people at a dinner table. We see the trio doing various normal things: playing games, doing puzzles, and making sandwiches. It all seems quite idyllic until a quake rattles the home. The music slows down, and it's revealed that the events are playing out in an underground bunker, and at least one of the three is there against their will. What caused the quake is unknown, as the word "Cloverfield" flashes briefly before the full title of the film, 10 Cloverfield Lane, appears. Against all odds, J.J. Abrams and the folks at Bad Robot surprised moviegoers for a second time.

Related

Matt Reeves Says Making ‘Cloverfield’ Was a “Weird High-Wire Act”

Reeves discusses the iconic teaser trailer, fighting for the handheld POV, potential sequel ideas, & more ahead of 'Cloverfield's 15th anniversary.

The film took the marketing plan of the first film and turned it up a notch, as described in detail by Collider's Haleigh Foutch. The long-dormant websites associated with Cloverfield were revived, with the fictional drilling company Tagruato's website serving as ground zero. Tagruato happens to be the parent company of Slusho, and their deep sea drilling is to extract its secret ingredient: seabed nectar. Another reveal shows that after opening a drilling station off of New York, they launched a satellite, starting their space program under its subsidiary, Bold Futura. Another website for an environmentalist guerrilla group, T.I.D.O. Wave, documented their efforts to uncover what Tagruato was really up to through a series of video blogs, including how they weren't actually drilling oil, but the aforementioned "seabed nectar."

E-mails were sent to the fictional company, and replies came back signed "Employee of the Month: 2016 January." That led to yet another website, where that employee is identified as John Goodman's Howard Stambler. Now things were getting really interesting. More websites, more links, evidence of Stambler's growing paranoia, and voicemails continued to fill in the backstory before the film. The marketing even extended into the real world, where people were led to burner cell phones in Eiffel Tower bags, and a case filled with survival gear and a pair of USB drives, on which were audio files of a satellite launch. When the movie did finally hit theaters, film-goers were treated with a top-notch psychological thriller, with an ending that — SPOILER — placed 10 Cloverfield Lane within the context of the first film.

10 Cloverfield Lane

PG-13

A young woman is held in an underground bunker by a man who insists that a hostile event has left the surface of the Earth uninhabitable.

Release Date

March 10, 2016

Director

Dan Trachtenberg

Cast

John Goodman , Mary Elizabeth Winstead , John Gallagher Jr. , Douglas M. Griffin , Suzanne Cryer , Bradley Cooper

Runtime

105

Main Genre

Thriller

WATCH ON PARAMOUNT+

'The Cloverfield Paradox' Dropped Right After Its Super Bowl Ad

The first two films in the Cloverfield franchise utilized a game-changing marketing campaign that began well before their respective releases, which is why The Cloverfield Paradox's strategy stands as a huge anomaly. There were no websites or hidden clues, and the film was referred to as "God Particle" during production, throwing off those on the lookout. Instead, there was one, only one, promotional push, and it came during Super Bowl LII. It's no secret that commercial breaks during the Super Bowl are the most highly coveted in the ad market, with a 30-second commercial during the 2018 game between the Patriots and the Eagles going for upwards of $5 million. Netflix used one such spot to advertise The Cloverfield Paradox. Not just advertise, mind you, but announce that the film would be available to stream immediately following the game.

It was a bold and unprecedented move, one that could have potentially revolutionized the marketing of movies from that point forward. It did succeed in driving viewers to watch the film, with the previously cited Variety article pegging viewership at 785,000 people on the night of its debut, and approximately 2.8 million views over the first three days. But as far as changing the marketing game? Like the Patriots that night, The Cloverfield Paradox lost. Truthfully, it had already lost even before airing. It was initially produced by Paramount, who, sensing a dud, dumped it on Netflix. It wasn't supposed to be a Cloverfield film, with the plot retrofitted to make it work. And its biggest sin was that it simply was not a good film, with Collider's Matt Goldberggiving the film a D, one of its many negative reviews.

It's likely that had the film been better, the strategy would have been far more impactful, but it's something that hasn't been tried again since. Overall, the marketing for all three films will never be replicated. (Well, unless we do get another Cloverfield movie.) It's become significantly more difficult to keep movie "secrets" away from the public, and the commitment to scouring the internet on a scavenger hunt of sorts has lessened. Why take the time when there are multiple websites who actually pay people to do that work? But even if the Cloverfield franchise's marketing strategies no longer work the same, it doesn't change how revolutionary those strategies were. Cloverfield pioneered the use of the internet in promoting films and proved that taking chances with a marketing campaign can capture the imagination of thousands.

The Cloverfield Paradox

PG-13

Release Date

February 4, 2018

Director

Julius Onah

Cast

Gugu Mbatha-Raw , David Oyelowo , Daniel Brühl , John Ortiz , Chris O'Dowd , Aksel Hennie

Runtime

102 minutes

Main Genre

Sci-Fi

Watch on Netflix