Top 10 Movie Gimmicks

The gimmick: A modern take on the movie gimmick is the viral marketing campaign. No movie used it better than the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield. As early as six months in advance, filmmakers were creating Web sites with no overt ties to the film, which Web users eagerly discovered and speculated about online. That and a cryptic film trailer were the perfect combination to generate buzz...

The result: ...Which the film did not sustain. Cloverfield suffered from the fact that the viral marketing campaign was ultimately more interesting than the movie itself.

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