Viral Marketing Kicks Off For Abram’s ‘Super 8′ With The Rocket Poppeteers

Some could say that one of the best elements of 2008’s Cloverfield was the immense viral marketing and alternate reality games that lead up to the film’s release. It seems that the same marketing team behind that film is at it again for J.J. Abram’s upcoming sci-fi thriller Super 8.

The film’s plot is shrouded in a good amount of mystery, but what we’ve gleaned is that the story follows two young men who capture something they weren’t meant to see on a super 8 home video camera, which leads to all kinds of chaos.

A few months back, an ARG popped up site that seems to be made for the film over at www.scariestthingieversaw.com. Once clicked on, the site becomes a vintage code screen that takes you to a dead end after about 5 minutes of execution lines. There are tons of different commands that take you to several puzzling files, but overall the site was done as a major viral marketing plan.

One of the cool things at the viral site is if you enter the command .PRINT SCOM8. Two sheets are sent to your printer of a vintage newspaper with an ad for The Rocket Poppeteeers. If you signed up, you’d get a letter welcoming you as a new member of the Poppeteer Astronaut Program.

Since the site went live, there have been plenty of updates and additions, and the Rocket Poppeteer group was actually onhand at Comic-Con this year giving out free popsicles. Nobody really knew what they were promoting, until now.

Check out the acceptance letter and newspaper ads after the jump (to spare your printer the ink) and be sure to keep an eye out for more great new mysteries surrounding Abrams’ Super 8 as we await the film’s release next summer.