Mobile Scans, Real-Life Manhunt Build “Repo” Excitement

You can’t say Universal Pictures isn’t going for the buzz in ballyhooing its upcoming release “Repo Men.” To promote the movie—about a future world of costly artificial organs that can be reclaimed for non-payment—the studio is mounting both an integrated outdoor/mobile push using barcodes and an elaborate role-playing game involving a real-life manhunt for four people.

The barcode campaign, now taking place in 15 U.S. cities, involves outdoor creative for the movie that includes a small barcode in the corner of the posters. Users can scan these codes with an iPhone equipped with reader software from Red Laser, decode them and link to pages of apparent sales brochures for artificial hearts, kidneys, livers, eyes, and so on.

Other codes link to video clips showing a cable shopping network show touting the latest and most expensive artificial organs—”artiforgs,” in the world of the movie—or to a guerilla Web site supposedly representing a movement to resist The Union, the finance arm that underwrites these costly organs and then repossesses them when the owners default.

Integrating bar codes into the out-of-home campaign for “Repo Men” was totally—well, organic, according to Ben Blatt, digital marketing manager for Universal. In the movie, the Union’s repossession teams scan bar codes built into the synthetic organs to confirm that the owners are in arrears.

Mobile extension was “a natural” for the campaign designed by universal and digital agency 360i, Blatt says.

“It doesn’t happen too often that we are able to promote a movie using creative in a way that ties it so closely to a technology,” he says. “We’ve wanted to do a few mobile extensions in the past but didn’t have the right fit. Well, this was the perfect fit.”

While iPhone users are still a minority in the U.S. mobile customer base, Blatt says their tech-forward demographic is right for this movie.

“The demo that we’re going after is early adopters, so they’ll recognize the barcode, know how to get it from iTunes and know what to do with it,” Blatt says.

Most of the “reward” content that can be unlocked in the barcode campaign also lives Web site purported to be the “official” Internet front door for The Union, the evil finance facility that links “Repo Men” thematically to both the current healthcare debate and the recent predatory mortgage lending scandals. Visitors here can find an interactive catalog of mechanical body parts, some pitch-perfect broadcast ads for the same, and an explanation of the Union’s “easy financing” terms, including some very critical small print.

The movie also has a more conventional promotional site which features a countdown clock to the premiere and both general and restricted “red line” trailers.

Mobile scanning might have been a natural fit for the campaign. But when it came time for Universal and 360i to choose a mobile scanning platform to integrate with the creative, the choices were a lot more complex, says David Berkowitz, 360i director of emerging media and innovation.

“Most of the scan platforms out there are designed to tie into real products and work with a shopping experience,” he says. While brands can “buy” a barcode and link it to anything they want, if the entity represented by the code is not a real product but fictional, then most other code scanners will reject that entry in the database. The agency and the studio needed a scan platform willing to customize.

“Red Laser is one of the most widely utilized and downloaded barcode scanner applications and is consistently featured as one of the top applications in the iTunes store,” Berkowitz says. “Its widespread popularity and the fact that the company worked with us to integrate fictitious products from the movie made them a natural partner for this campaign.”

Meanwhile, in a separate buzz campaign around “Repo Men”—which opens March 19—Universal and Lone Shark Games are running a live-action alternate reality game (ARG) in which registrants need to search for clues to locate and tag four fugitives from The Union’s repo squads.

The game, which lives on the Wired.com Web site, started in early February when Lone Shark and Universal began accepting applications for the four target runners. The four people chosen, all real individuals using their real names and scattered around the U.S., were given $2,500 apiece in expense money and told to just vanish and to stay hidden for a month.

Registered game players must complete a task a day to find clues to the locations of the four targets. They get those clues by checking a Web site or following an online wiki dedicated to the game. These tasks—things like “Watch the Olympics closing ceremonies in a public place” or ‘spend one hour in the evening sitting by a fire somewhere”—are intended to give the hunters a sporting chance to spot one of the runners.

If they do find a runner, game players simply need to go up to them and say “You’ve been repo’ed” to win $7,500. On the other hand, any of the runners who manage to make it to March 20 without being discovered will win $7,500.

Adding an element of cross-platform viral spread to the game, players who solve puzzles or come up with Web items of evidence about the runners can advance in the game by tweeting their finds using the #repomen hashtag or e-mailing the information to [email protected].