(Person) Percentage - Sabanci University Research Database

The Asian Media & Mass Communication Conference 2010 Osaka, Japan
the ABC tends to be an understated advertiser. Given the organisations diminished presence in
this domain, it undertook and ambitiously complex interplay of publicity strategies to build an
awareness of Bluebird AR and its gamic nature. Taking place both in and out of game, the
messages were carefully designed and tapered to ensure clarity of intent.
To entice the public's involvement in the lead-up, an out-of-game campaign engaged traditional
marketing and publicity techniques such as television promotions, media releases, interviews
with the project producers, and newspaper editorial pieces nationwide. Bluebird AR had support
from ABC Radio National and during Bluebird's live phase various radio programs aired
features on geoengineering. Much of this out-of-game marketing was designed as an information
campaign seeking to explicate the project's Alternate Reality possibilities but also to clarify its
status as fiction. Marketing staff worked to explain the interactive nature of the narrative and the
science behind the fiction. Pitching Bluebird AR to journalists posed a substantial challenge.
With little precursor of what and ARG was, of how Bluebird AR was to be different and of how
it would actually work, while remaining tight lipped about details of the mystery about to unfold,
meant that reporting on Bluebird AR was a challenge for even the most sympathetic and astute
journalist.
Pitching Bluebird AR to the broader international ARG community was much easier. ARG
groups in Europe and the US were sent packages containing in-game clues including a security
pass belonging to the protagonist, a usb stick containing information on the Bluebird
organisation and a hand written call-to-action. Within this community, these objects were
immediately recognised for what they were: a “rabbit hole” or pathway into a game. The
community responded accordingly. Two German gamers posted a youtube video in which they
analysed the clues and invited more players to get involved. The Unfiction Forum: an US based
ARG discussion group provoked intense player interest. Online game clues were searched for,
uncovered and forensically scrutinised beyond the expectation of ABC producers. For example:
in one characters flickr account, an accidentally misspelt image label was interpreted by players
as an important clue.
Back in Australia, in-game campaigns were launched on April 27 th alongside and interwoven
with the game narrative. The primary purpose of these messages was to drive the audience to
various character web sites and 'game' spaces within Bluebird AR and immerse them in the story.
These in-game campaigns took the form of protests against the Bluebird organisation, and were
led by game characters themselves. Campaigns crossed over into the physical world as protestors
in white bio hazard suits and gas marks holding large Stop Bluebird placards and handing out
stickers and fliers took to the streets of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. Stop Bluebird banner
ads urging the public to jump on board appeared on websites such as the UK's Guardian website,
and the ABC's own web page. In the first week alone, the games ABC hosted sites registered
30,000 hits.
Adaptation
Maintaining the proximity of BluebirdAR's reality to actual reality and thereby underscoring the
story’s relevance and significance was an ongoing task. The production team needed to be
highly informed and responsive in both the lead up and during the projects delivery and an
unanticipated level of flexibility was required to react to both real world events and audience
participation. But the main problem was not of keeping the fiction close to the reality, but to
prevent the two from entirely overlapping. Even during the 18 months leading up to the launch,
debate and discussion around geoengineering had escalated, and was receiving significantly
140