When finished properly, viral marketing campaigns can do huge services for the upcoming theater edition. Some campaigns take advantage of the smart advantage of release dates (Double Barbenheimer's Double is a truly successful example), while others conceptualize puzzles, web pages and hunters of cleaners who tie a fictional universe of the film to generate excitement. Sometimes these reality marketing tactics give things too far away, such as when false interviews and police reports promote "Blair's Witch Project" ended with the audience for real. But since the fictional story of a horror that is presented as a crime in real life, at least it can be checked by facts, the prophecy supported by science that predicts that the end of the world is somehow harder to refute. This is exactly where the viral marketing campaign for the disaster of Roland Emerich "2012" went wrong.

First, published pictures of Colombia Trailer for hanging An exhibition of a tsunami crashing over the Himalayas. "Search for the truth," the trailer called, along with the term "2012", as it will help create awareness of the inevitable destruction of the country in 2012 (the trailer was published in 2009). The problem with this awkward attempt to drive Google's traffic in favor of Emerich's film was that these clues were too vague to start, and could easily bring any iousubopitic person on the track marked by paranoid theories of the apocalypse.

To make things more complicated, the trailer was published along with a false web site called the Institute of Human Continuity, which claims that the title of scientific organization assesses threats to delay the inevitable 25 years. It also came with a warning that 94% of the world is likely to end in 2012, so we could "register for the lottery" that would decide who would be saved and who did not.

If you overturned your eyes after reading it, know that not everyone collected the apparent trick used to make a disaster movie. Actually some people took it So Seriously, NASA had to intervene and set the record directly.

Mankind has always been fascinated with the possibility of the world ending, as it directly talks about our deepest existential fears and daily regret. This impulse could be part of the reason why people were really afraid of the warning issued by the false web site, and even considering drastic measures, according to several news reports (through The Guardian). Things came out of hand that NASA astronomer David Morrison received 1000+ public hearings on the so -called apocalypse, as some were convinced that the organization was following the movements of the planet of the collision with the Earth. As an older scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Morrison could not help, but did not speak against Colombia Pix's irresponsible marketing campaign.

In an interview with IndependentMorrison revealed that some of the public hearings expressed a tendency to self -harm, and this disturbing feeling was shared by children who were unsolved by false news:

"They have created a complexion fake science website. It looks like slick. It talks about this organization having existed for 30 years Chaving concluded that is a 94 per cent chance of the early being controyed in 2012 - and it's all made up, it's pure fiction. To say they are contemplating suicide because they do not want the world.

I'm sure Colombia pictures did not intend to cause such a widespread panic. May have believed that the website would be received in the same vein in language as it is Fauxes puzzle cooked by Ridler before the movie "Batman" is released. However, the end of the world is a pretty serious business, and as soon as hysteria spreads it becomes difficult to separate the truth from fiction.

The campaign worked, however. "2012" ended as one of the highest films in the 2009 box office, although one of Emerich's painful average contributions.