I am here at the glorious Pop Culture Nerdfest that is COMIC CON. I’ll give you a full rundown soon. But I had to give you a little taste of this, the latest in subversive viral marketing. The new generation does NOT respond to smiling models holding a product, or thunderous voice-overs telling you how awesome a movie is going to be. The smartest people in the entertainment business have figured this out. 

Marketing a movie or a game or a show is now about whispering a secret code. It’s about barely mentioning a company that is part of the plot of the comic book based on your movie. It’s about ARG’s (artificial reality games); scavenger hunts that let the audience discover and share a new project… and thus take OWNERSHIP in it.

This has started happening more and more at Comic Con, and the latest and sneakiest is something called DISTRICT 9.

Prominently displayed around the convention center are banners that say, “For Humans Only, Non-Humans Banned.” There are even signs with the same logo by the restrooms, stating, “Restrooms for Humans only.”

This has got J.J. Abrams written all over it.

Or if it’s not him, it’s someone big, for some big project. So sly….

Check out the site, and the additional link to ANOTHER site, for MNU – A big corporation called Multi-National United. Their site has a lot about maintaining peace between humans and some extraterrestrial population.

Then today I witnessed a PROTEST MARCH for “non-human rights.” Fifty people with picket signs and everything, marching around noon in the Gaslamp district.

In the “Fringe” panel today, one of the last questions was to J.J., about this D-9 stuff. He had a distinct smirk about him when he said, “No, I don’t know anything about that.”

This is the fan-centric, super-sneaky marketing that gets people talking. Heck, it got me. I think it’s genius, and I don’t even know what it IS yet!