{"id":117480,"date":"2012-03-05T20:45:00","date_gmt":"2012-03-06T01:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/passion-play-5-things-the-dark-knight-can-teach-us-to-be-awesome-at-social-media\/"},"modified":"2024-12-21T05:51:38","modified_gmt":"2024-12-21T10:51:38","slug":"passion-play-5-things-the-dark-knight-can-teach-us-to-be-awesome-at-social-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dacgroup.com\/en-ca\/insights\/blog\/strategy\/passion-play-5-things-the-dark-knight-can-teach-us-to-be-awesome-at-social-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Passion Play: 5 Ways The Dark Knight Can Teach Us to be Awesome at Social Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ever notice how most social media<\/a> campaigns are so… pedestrian… middle of the road… safe? Maybe that’s why we expect so little from them in return. I suspect the issue begins with what we call this channel. I’ve always found the term ‘social’ to be rather lukewarm. It’s like ‘nice’ or ‘cute’. Social implies a lack of ambition. It is damning through faint praise. This must be the only channel where marketers get to be evaluated on ‘engagement’ and ‘conversation’. 3,000 people liked your brand because you gave something away? Brilliant. Did they like you or the fact that you were giving away free stuff? By the way, when was being liked good enough? What about being loved<\/em>? How about a little passion, a little excitement?<\/p>\n

Arguably the best use of the channel that I’ve seen is now a little dated but it remains a masterpiece. This campaign was detailed in a Mashable article<\/a>, but in a nutshell, in May of 2011, over\u00a0a year before the release date of the new Batman film, visitors to the official website<\/a> of the movie The Dark Knight Rises\u00a0were confronted by a black screen and chanting on a continuous audio loop. One particularly tenacious fanboy discovered that putting this loop through an audio program produced a spectrum that spelled #thefirerises. This in turn led to the Twitter account @TheFireRises<\/a>,\u00a0which led to a site featuring an image of the villain of the movie, Bane. But wait! There’s more \u2014 this image was not a simple photo or movie still. It was a composite created by images of users that chose to share the website through Facebook or Twitter.<\/p>\n

For this campaign to succeed, it was necessary for an individual to be motivated and capable enough to crack a complex code. And then share a website. For no material gain. And yet it happened in such a way that the campaign went viral. The key lessons here are:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Really<\/em> understand your audience:<\/b>\n
    \n \n
    \n
    \n

    \n Stay Forward <\/h2>\n

    \n Get exclusive insights into digital
    media's top-trending topics delivered
    directly to your inbox. <\/p>\n <\/div>\n\n

    \n
    \n
    \n
    \n \n