When viral marketing improves a movie

In theaters Friday: The Five-Year Engagement, The Raven

New on Blu-ray/DVD: Contraband

TED Talks convey a simple, but infinitely malleable concept: Ideas worth spreading.

That’s it. These short videos on a range of topics—most explore some aspect of technology, entertainment or design in less than 20 minutes—go viral in what seems like an instant, spreading across the eyelids of countless social media users who want to rethink the way they approach community, creativity and problem solving.

As such, TED offers the perfect opportunity to wed inspirational infotainment to the promotion of a film that purports to contain big ideas of its own. Enter Ridley Scott and his new sci-fi thriller Prometheus. Last month, the first of the film’s viral marketing pieces landed in the form of a faux-futurist TED Talk. Starring actor Guy Pearce playing the role of Peter Weyland, a billionaire founder of a tech company, this Prometheus teaser was designed to look like an official TED Talk from the 2020s.

“Prometheus takes place in the future, but it’s a movie about ideas, and I just felt like it would be really cool to have one of the characters from the movie give a TEDTalk,” said Scott’s son, Luke, who directed the short clip. “Wouldn’t it be cool if it was a TED talk from a decade in the future? And what is a TEDTalk going to look like in 10 years?”

The official nature of the video is a cheeky bonus, but its real power, the true reason it succeeds as a viral promotion for Prometheus when so many other similar web campaigns for film fail is that the TED Talk perfectly set the tone for the film while introducing characters and concepts that will be fleshed out in the feature. It gives added value, peaks interest and gives added value, supplemental information, without simply regurgitating what will be in the finished film.

Scott followed the Pearce’s TED clip with a second viral video recently. This one stars Michael Fassbender, who plays Prometheus‘ resident human-like android. Playing out like an extended corporate commercial, the video introduces businesses to the latest iteration of “David 8,” a robot nearly indistinguishable from humans and capable of performing organizational tasks or jobs ordinary works might find “distressing” or “unethical.”

Imbued with refined, quiet performance and plenty humor, wit and stunning design work, the clip is gripping from start to finish. Dropping it into the middle of the film, and the pace would not skip a beat.

When a film gets this much right about its marketing campaign, I can’t wait to see what the feature is like. So far, Prometheus has set the bar for viral marketing. With ticket sales sagging and overlong film trailers that show every explosion and way too much of the plot, more films should take a cue from Scott’s team and deliver exciting teasers that introduce viewers to new words and characters and add some excitement to the movie-going experience. That’s an idea worth spreading.

Prometheus arrives June 8.