We may be seeing the twilight of viral marketing. It isn’t nearly the fad it once was. Which is a mixed blessing, because on the one hand most people find viral marketing tactics to be as annoying as a symphony composed for scratching chalkboards and rubbing balloons, but on the other hand the really big viral marketing efforts become legends that get talked about years later in articles like this one.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari – A German expressionist film from the 1920s. What, you thought viral marketing was a new thing? This example is notable for being the first – they advertised it with posters which just said “You MUST become Caligari!” in expressionist German, without any mention of what they were referring to. Since it’s gone out of copyright and into public domain everywhere but Germany, you can legally get it free here. And it’s a good, silent, black-and-white, creepy flick, too!

The Blair Witch Project – We have to include this, and we’re only doing that because of the sheer obligation. This sucky piece of amateur angst came along at the right place and right time, so that a film shot for about five dollars cleared a quarter of a billion worldwide even though it was no different from the one thousand other amateur backyard films made every year. The Blair Bitch Project is also the least-scary, silliest film we’ve seen.

2012 – The disaster film inspired by an ancient rock found in Mayan ruins, which they at first thought was a calender but later turned out to be somebody’s blog. Meanwhile the website Institute for Human Continuity is still up out there pretending to be an organization for ensuring the human race survives the big catastrophe. Hundreds still fall for it.

Toy Story 3 – The film franchise that inspired a million graphics geeks is now viral-marketing one of its characters with a retro TV commercial for the “Lots-O-Huggin’ Bear,” which is very carefully designed not to resemble Pedobear in any way.

Lost – Now that everybody’s been burned by the ending, let’s have a look back at the famous fake websites created to tie in with fictional elements on the show. First there’s The Hanso Foundation, then there’s the use of Oceanic Airlines – a public-domain fictional airline used in many media, then there’s a How-Stuff-Works entry for the DHARMA Initiative, and a virtual reality game called “The Lost Experience” to tie it all together. Well played!

Aqua Teen Hunger Force – Who can forget the big hub-bub of 2007, when lit-up Mooninite signs appeared all over Boston and later other US cities, and Americans, terrified of anything bright and threatening-looking, thought it was a bomb scare? Cartoon Network said they didn’t intend for the stunt to backfire. Yeah, right.

Year Zero – Industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails put this out as a cryptic alternate reality game to promote the Year Zero album. This isn’t even the first time Nine Inch Nails has demonstrated media-savvy – remember the original Quake game, where Trent Reznor did the soundtrack and got a deal where every box of nails for the two nailguns had the NIN logo?

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