by Mandy J Watson

Posted: 1 October 2009 << Previous Page

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Many web sites were launched as part of the online viral-marketing effort to promote District 9. In this showcase we will look at those sites (collectively referred to as "The District 9 Movie Experience"), and more, to see how they related to, and complemented, the real-world marketing campaign. (Plus, for fans, find out about some amazing items and downloads you may have missed on each site.)

Requirements: Flash
Recommendations: Headphones/speakers

The Multi-National United: Community Watch site is quite fun. If you have been wondering what the purpose of the 1-866-666-6001 MNU hotline number was, this is the answer. For a few weeks in the US and Canada, after the marketing campaign was launched before the movie premiered and until a few days after its release, the hotline allowed anyone in those two countries to phone and leave their voice alerts detailing who they are, where they come from, and what non-human sighting they want to report. You can surf the map and click on the various cities to get a pop-up window listing one (or sometimes a few) accessible voice messages from that city. They are all streamed MP3s and they vary in size from about 100 KB to 300 KB. The spontaneous messages are very entertaining and a number of ones I listened to - for some reason - mentioned sightings of non-humans in trees. (The less I comment about that the better.)


The site allows you to link to any of the phone calls - the link will load the MNU Community Watch site and highlight the phone call, which you can then play. The call highlighted above, for example, is from a kid named Jonathan in Portland, Oregon [ listen (218 KB MP3) ].

Other examples:

• Carson, Cedar Falls, Iowa (290 KB MP3)
• Michael, Louisvile, Kentucky (107 KB MP3)

There is also a news ticker at the top of the screen that highlights the number of documented sightings in a particular area. I would presume that it's related to the number of phone-call files that are accessible to visitors at the site.

Sadly the phone number was only accessible in the US and Canada and the resulting site is, of course, North American centric, as it would have been fun to have had a database of phone calls from all over the world. It also would have been better, I think, if the hotline had remained active for a few weeks, rather than a few days, after the movie's US release, as I'm sure a number of people only realised what was going on long after they had seen the movie. Sadly, much like the promotional Twitter accounts, which will be discussed in another article, everything came to an abrupt end, for no discernible (good) reason.

The site remains active for now, though, and there are a lot of phone calls archived, so it's worth having a look at for a true slice of life in America.

Web: http://d-9.com/communitywatch/

On The Internet

Official Site: District 9