The Client: A new media agency for one of the world's largest entertainment companies.

The Idea: Promotion of the movie Ring Two a sequel to the movie The Ring via a viral campaign. The idea was to replicate one of the most memorable scenes of the movie such that it spreads over virally. The scene is like…lead actress of the film finds a video cassette, when she plays it; it shows up a horrific scene and just then her phone rings saying she has just 7 more days to live. The idea suggested by the agency was to create this scare online and encourage users to scare their mates. The client’s idea was a system where the user enters the email address of his mates with their phone numbers, when the user clicks on the link, a image of a VCR cassette shows up, on clicking that, it would start off the terrifying video and sound. While the movie is still on, the user’s phone rings up saying, “7 days left”, and just after that the screen encourages the user to scare out more of their mates.

The Challenge: Easier said than done. There were numerous challenges to convert the idea into an implementation.

The Solution: We developed a web based application for the user’s interface, at the back of that an admin interface for the new media agencies and territory managers to check the viral stats. We charted out the weakest links in the whole project and created workarounds for them. On click of a link the system would immediately query the database to find the user’s phone number and pass it out to PSTN server1, in 20 seconds if the number is not dialed out, it passes it to PSTN server2 and if that doesn’t dial it out then it would send the call to the VOIP server in the US.

The Result: Everything that could have gone wrong actually went wrong, except for the flawless running for the project. The robust planning of failovers automatically handled all the issues without a hitch. Our city (Pune) encountered a flood like situation with some parts under water, one of the telecoms knocked off for some period; thunderstorms disrupted our power supply and uprooted some phone lines. Each time one of these things happened, the alternative arrangements like UPS, gen sets, alternate Telco, alternate servers and US based VOIP server picked up within seconds, from where the failed system had stopped. There was no disruption of service beyond a few seconds (which no one other than us realized.) The virals were a hit beyond the client’s wildest expectations. They became a rave on blogs and forums flooding with discussions on this viral, we had visitors from several countries not in the campaign. Each country exceeded the number of trailer views / calls it anticipated.

It has become industry news and this campaign has been short listed for the best viral "The Future of Marketing Awards" for Europe this year, for 4 possible awards. Best Interactive Viral, Best Stand-Alone Viral, Most Innovative Viral and Best Mobile Viral.