The Number's Up for Jim Carrey on YouTube

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Client: New Line Cinema
Publisher(s): YouTube

Could you share your darkest obsessions? That's exactly what this New Line Cinema and YouTube campaign is asking subscribers and people across the country to do to promote Joel Schumacher's new movie, "The Number 23."

Jim Carrey stars in the psychological thriller as Walter Sparrow, who becomes manic and obsessive once he receives a book from his wife that seems to be based on his life. The main character in the novel has a haunting obsession with the number 23, and Carrey's character soon adopts the same obsession when he discovers his own connection with the fated number. Carrey's character begins having nightmares about the climax of the novel, which ends in a foretold murder-- as the story and his own obsession with the number 23 consumes him.

New Line Cinema is giving users a chance to receive "absolution of their sins" if they submit anonymous confessions of their "deepest darkest obsessions." One contributor will win $2300, and 23 other submissions will be featured on the movie's official website.

You can watch the movie trailer, leave comments and watch the confessions of contestants. If you have a gnawing desire to "repent your sins," you can also leave your own confession or visit one of many traveling confession booths in major cities around the country for a chance to win.
-- Krisserin Canary, associate editor, iMediaConnection

Creative Showcase is meant to be a teaching tool and an inspiration for our readers. We comment only on creative that we really love. Our panelists discuss what makes it great, but if they feel there were missed opportunities that would have made it better, we invite them to mention those. And finally, we seek out a wide range of opinions that reflect the marketplace for the panel, in order to provide constructive, useable feedback for agencies, clients and others involved in these creative pieces.

Think you are having an unlucky day? Think again. Jim Carey's horror-flick character takes it to a new level in the movie "Number 23." Apparently, 23 is the new 13. I thought I was a seasoned Web 2.0 guy, but this is the first commercial campaign I've seen that successfully pulls off the re-skinning of a branded YouTube page. From a viral marketing perspective, this YouTube campaign site hits on all cylinders (as you'd suspect from anything YouTube does). Subscribe to all the user-generated content for this site, send to a friend, share the channel-- these are just the basics. The main call-to-action of the site is to submit a video of one of your darkest secrets, confessions or obsessions to be eligible to win $2300. Most of the videos submitted are humorous (one girl gushes about her obsession with men with hairy nipples) instead of the scary confessions that the site likely intended. However, the diversity of contestant-entered videos adds to the entertainment factor of this campaign site that has such great content on it.

The comments on this page are my favorite part of the site. A couple of them give the most apt creative review of the movie trailer because they provide a whole spectrum of viewpoints-- from horror-flick aficionados to those mocking this newly-induced fear in the number 23. Dogmaf writes, "The number 23 will forever be there to haunt you. Everything is connected with 23 because everything is connected with 666." In a more lighthearted tone, Mouser26 says, "Jim Carey in a Horror-like flick. Steller. Sounds like the man making more than a name for himself. Comedy, melodrama, chickflick, and now horror Sweetness." The end of the trailer leaves you in suspense, but my prediction is that Michael Jordan (the most famous number 23) could make a cameo appearance. Then again, don't hold your breath.
-- Ryan Buchanan, CEO, eROI

More and more marketers are enlisting the power of community to increase the power of their traditional media advertising. By leveraging the power of an existing and active community like YouTube, it's easy to create a channel in which consumers can interact, create content and publish that content to their spheres of influence.

The idea behind the "Number 23" YouTube microsite enlists just that concept. Visitors are invited to share their own "obsessions" through video confessionals. The strength of the idea is that it reinforces the main concept of the movie -- obsession -- by asking visitors to become a part of the movie experience through their own videos. However, in execution, there seems to be a few things that are lacking. First, I have seen no media support for the microsite, so I can only assume that they are playing mainly to the YouTube community. Second, I think the reward would have been stronger if instead of being just cash, the winning clip was featured in a television commercial or in some wider-reaching medium. This allows the contest to play to a motivation of fame that is shared by many videobloggers. 

All in all, I applaud New Line Cinema for its latest venture into the social media/CGM space. It's a learning process for all marketers, and while I think this is a great step in the right direction, it is up to all marketers to figure out how to leverage these communities to their utmost.
-- Ryan Anderson, public relations manager, Fuel Industries