Mission Icefly Continued

Well, it certainly has been a busy day. I'm not quite sure if you could tell that by the fact that I updated the previous post 12 times. All the cities have been cleared, so now we are just waiting to see what happens. Will we soon be able to see the website that I only got a glimpse of when the sight first went live??? I promised pictures from the campaign so here they are, in no particular order. I wasn't fast enough to get them all, but here are most of them. We will start with Dallas.

While this was going on, Mission Icefly was also operating a Flickr page where people could upload pictures of them receiving the package. This is what it seems like took place: at the location was a black envelope with the Icefly printed on it. Inside the envelope was a key, which would open a lock, labeled "fortress" that was on a giant box, labeled "human preservation project." inside the box was the cool light up statue of the Icefly. Still no word on what this is for yet... So stay tuned.

Mission Icefly Begins! - UPDATED X12

The countdown clock has reached zero!

When you get to the Mission Icefly website, the timer is just blinking a bunch of zeros. If you scroll your mouse over the eye looking thing to the right of the timer, there seems to be some static interference. Click on it, and it opens up like the shutter of a camera, and theicefly (for lack of better name) flies right through it, into a barely lit tunnel.The next page that loads, at least for the first few minutes that the website was live, looked like this:

If you notice, all of the major cities are listed on either side of a video screen, but right now all that can be seen is a bunch of static interference. The text beneath it says "You are needed for Mission Icefly - the search has begun." The search for what?!? Also, he new URL has the word 'rescue' added to the end of it - who or what needs rescuing?

Underneath that text, there are a bunch of pentagons, which reminds me of the pentagon that was present in the ID badge that I made at the beginning of this campaign. And finally, underneath that is a list of numbers with the heading "In The Field" above it. I'm assuming those are the people that are going out there to these locations.

However, now if you click on the camera shutter type thing on the mission icefly webpage, all that comes up is a black screen with "Orlando" and "New York" links. If you click on the Orlando link, the following comes up:

It's a picture of... a bench? I don't really get it. And, where is this package that they speak of? Clicking on the link for New York doesn't provide much more insight:

...except that it is not an image of a bench, but of the threshold of some building/apartment/house. What is going on??? I'll keep updating as more pictures from the other cities are uploaded. I know I've said this before, but this is supposedly not for "The Dark Knight Rises." However, I can't shake the fact that the next leg of the viral marketing campaign is set to start any minute now... stay tuned!

UPDATE #!:

I'm going to be posting short and sweet updates as more occurs throughout the day. Before, you could click on Orlando and New York to be taken to a PDF, which I wrote about in the last post. Now, you can no longer click on New York. Mission (partly) accomplished?

UPDATE #2:

Now Orlando is gone, and New York has been credited to Nrickolai.

UPDATE #3:

Chicago, Boston and Nashville now listed in the cities, along with their PDFs. Pictures to come soon.

UPDATE #4:

All the cities are listed now, but not all of them are clickable links. Only Chicago, Boston and Nashville are able to be clicked on.

UPDATE #5:

Boston and Chicago have been crossed out.

UPDATE #6:

Nashville's out, too, but Atlanta, Dallas and Washington DC have been added. I will post the pictures soon. I have noticed, however, that at the top of each of the PDFs, there are coordinates to the location that is pictured, presumably. Furthermore, each picture seems to be of a bench or a plant. Stay tuned...

UPDATE #7:

Atlanta is out, and now, at the top of the website, there is a creepy video playing. If you watch it for long enough, you start to see some clearer pictures and Terry O'Quinn's voice. You can't ever hear completely what he says, but only the beginnings of two sentences. The first starts with, "We experience every second through our senses..." and the second starts with, "Who and what we are is taken..."

UPDATE #8:

Still waiting on Dallas (that's what you get when you pick Dallas over Houston...). Meanwhile, over on Twitter, @NCrist posted pictures of what was included in the package. It seems to be some kind of light up statue of the Icefly - check out the pics:

UPDATE #9:

There has been more added to the video, including O'Quinn saying, "They define how we..." Presumably he is still talking about the senses. There are also some shots of a red-headed girl in a car and what appears to be a young male pilot flying a military plane.

UPDATE #10:

The FLICKR account for Mission Icefly has been updated with pictures from New York, Orlando, Chicago and Nashville, the first cities completed. The statue came in a wooden box stuffed with packaging "hay." It would have been really cool if I got my hands on one of those...

UPDATE #11:

Dallas is finally closed, and the links for Phoenix and Denver are now live. More of the video has been posted as well, and it is just as weird.

UPDATE #12:

San Francisco and Las Vegas are both live.

Mission Icefly Update

On Saturday I posted about the updates to the Mission Icefly website - a new version of their Bonnaroo video was posted online and some mysterious letters appeared at the bottom of the page. Well, more and more letters have been added to the original ones, and now it is quite obvious what they are spelling out. Take a look for yourself:

It is clearly spelling out major cities across the United States. As of this posting, all the letters have been filled in, and the cities are:

• Los Angeles
• Phoenix
• Las Vegas
• Portland
• Dallas
• Washington, DC
• Nashville
• Chicago
• Denver
• Orlando
• Seattle
• Boston
• New York
• San Fransisco
• Atlanta

Along with those cities, the following instructions are posted: "ATTENTION TEST SUBJECTS: Starting at 00:00:00:00:000 we will need one volunteer in each of the listed locations to follow a signal. Details: bring a mobile phone with you. You will need to use your online user name from TestSubjectsNeeded.com during the mission. Only one package available per location (first come, first served)."

What could that package be? Why isn't Houston one of the cities? When are people supposed to go to these places, and where are they supposed to go? My guess is that when the clock reaches zero (this Thursday around 1:00 pm), the city names will be clickable links with coordinates of some sort. Then, who ever gets to that location first will be the lucky person that gets the package.

This is all very reminiscent of a part of the "Why So Serious" campaign, when the Joker released coordinates to different bowling alleys around the world, along with a locker number and combination. Inside that locker was a Joker-ized bowling ball and other collectible goodies, along with a cell phone and a number to call and enlist yourself as part of Joker's army.

Did I get one of those bowling balls? Nope - I was thirty seconds too late. Literally. I was the second person there. And, just to add insult to injury, one of those packages went on to sell for several thousand dollars on eBay. That's right. THOUSAND.

This whole campaign definitely has the scent of 42 Entertainment all over it. I just can't shake the feeling that it might be "The Dark Knight Rises" related, even though I've heard again and again that it is definitely not. But there is no way it is for gum, right? I guess we will have to wait until Thursday to find out.

By the way - is anyone that frequents this site currently in any of the cities listed above? If so, let me know if you'd be interested in doing some field work for me. I can't promise any pay... but I can promise a good time. That sounds shady.

John Locke is Part of Mission: Icefly!

his "Test Subjects Needed" campaign is proving more and more intriguing with each bit of information that is released. I still stand by the fact that I no longer think it has anything to do with the marketing campaign for "The Dark Knight Rises," however, I'm choosing to continue to follow it on this site. Maybe I'll turn this site into one that follows all sorts of viral marketing campaigns, not just the one for TDKR. But that's a discussion for another time. (Until I decide whether or not I am going to do that, you could let me know if you would want me to cover other campaigns or not by sounding off in the comments section of this post. If you want me to cover other campaigns, just say "yay," and if you don't, say "nay.")

The last bit of action that has happened with TSN is that they launched the "Mission Icefly" website and along with it the YouTube video of a Bonnaroo concert being bombarded with tiny blue light blinking paper helicopters. Well, a new version of that video has ended up online, but this version has a special surprise at the end of it.

Did you catch the new addition at the end of the video? It's a choppy video of a goateed Terry O'Quinn, better known as John Locke from the hit TV show LOST.

Terry being in this video and thus part of this campaign definitely lends a certain credibility to the whole thing, in my opinion. Did you hear what he says? It's difficult to make out, but it starts out with "We all have certain..." Certain what, Terry?!? My thinking is that we will find out more next week as the countdown clock on the Mission Icefly website reaches zero. Speaking of that website, if you go back and visit it, there are some mysterious letters down at the bottom of the screen.

It is definitely a sentence with some letters blocked out, Wheel of Fortune style. I'm guessing we will find out what it says, soon. Thanks to MovieViral for the heads up about this development. They still seem to think it's for Wrigley's 5 gum, but I'm thinking it's something bigger now that Terry O'Quinn is involved. What would I like it to be, if my wildest dreams came true? A final final season of LOST, one that actually answers all of the questions. That would be phenomenal, but I highly doubt it. Check back next week as the countdown clock reaches zero, and don't forget to comment about my idea, or to take the poll!

The Test Subjects Needed Package Has Arrived

This past weekend I was in Kansas City for a buddy's wedding. When I came back home, this package was waiting for me:

Did you happen to catch where the package was sent from?

There are two things to take away from the return label. First of all, this was clearly from Test Subjects Needed, the viral campaign that started several weeks ago. Secondly, the return address is to Pasadena, California. Why is that so important? Because 42 Entertainment, the advertising agency behind the marketing campaign for "The Dark Knight," is located in Pasadena, California. So at least we can now that they are behind this viral campaign. Unfortunately, we still don't know who it is for.

The package was one of those bubble mailers that you can send CDs in. In fact it was roughly the size of a cd. Inside was the following slip of paper:

In case you can't read the text, it says "We are both creatures of the senses, you and I - we inhabit the same reality, shimmering just below the perceivable world. The pulse is growing. Can you feel it?" At the top of the piece of paper is what appears to be a bee or a wasp.

Also inside the package is what I can only describe as a paper helicopter. At the base of the helicopter is a battery powered blinking blue light, and then it breaks off into two wings. If you were to drop this from a reasonable height, the entire thing would start to spin, much like a helicopter.

On the same tab where the blinking blue light is located, there is the same image of the insect or wasp. On one of the tabs is a QR reader barcode, and on the other one is the phrase "Mission Icefly."

If you take a picture of the barcode with a QR scanner on your phone, it leads you to the website www.missionicefly.com where there is a countdown clock ticking down to nine days from now.

Clicking on the "Test Subjects Needed Now" text leads you to the original website where you can take the creepy test. Clicking on the tv screen up at the top of the page leads you to a pretty cool YouTube video. It takes place at Bonnaroo music festival where thousands of these paper helicopters are being dropped on the audience. In they video, they have no idea what is going on, but as someone states, it's "cooler than fireworks."

Did that really happen at Bonnaroo? I have no idea. I feel like I would have heard about it by now, because that is pretty cool. We still have no idea what this is for, but as more and more is unveiled it is becoming highly unlikely that this is for "The Dark Knight Rises." I'll still keep updating about it until they reveal who the mystery client is. Stay tuned as that nine day countdown comes to a close.

Test Subjects Needed UPDATE

t's been a few weeks since the website for the Human Preservation Project, www.testsubjectsneeded.com, launched to instant speculation that it was a part of the marketing campaign for "The Dark Knight Rises." A week after it was launched, it was revealed that 42 Entertainment, the company behind the marketing for "The Dark Knight," was indeed responsible for the Test Subjects Needed campaign - however they claim that they have not yet been tapped to do the marketing for the new Batman film. That lead me to believe one of two things: either they are being coy and they are in fact in charge of the advertising for the film, or they are telling the truth and Test Subjects Needed is for a different client - not Batman.

This week is the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) - a huge event for video games and electronics. Apparently at the event attendees were given two overlaying sheets of plastic that created the image of a flying insect, most likely a wasp. On the back of the sheet of plastic was the URL to the Test Subjects Needed website.

Supposedly people think that this is in fact a marketing campaign for a brand new video game by developer Bungie. Back in 2004 when Halo 2 was about to come out, Bungie hired 42 Entertainment to do a viral marketing campaign called "I Love Bees" to help promote that highly anticipated game. At this years E3, Microsoft announced that Halo 4 will be available for purchase Holiday 2012 - so this could very well be the campaign for that game.

The "I Love Bees" campaign was a smash hit - 250,000 people viewed the ilovebees website when it was launched in August of 2004, with an additional 50,000 people returning to the site each time it was updated. More than three million viewers visited the site during its run, and thousands participated in the game worldwide. It was a huge, award winning success for Bungie and 42 Entertainment, which was evidenced in the warm reception of Halo 2 by the public.

What does all of this mean? It means that Test Subjects Needed is most likely not part of the campaign for "The Dark Knight Rises." And since we now know that the YouTube Channel is probably fan made, that means that the only event that has been an official part of the marketing of this movie is the website that resulted in the mosaic of Bane. So besides that, there has been no marketing for this film. But don't worry - ComicCon is just around the corner. And then, things will really start to pick up steam. 

Prepare to Synchronize Your Senses

'm starting to think that "Test Subjects Needed" is really part of the campaign! Once you get on that website, you are shown the screen below. This all sounds very intriguing to me - at first I thought this might have to do with Dr. Strange. But now I am thinking that this is the program that created Bane. "Enhanced amplifications as sensory reliant reliant human beings"? Sounds exactly like what could have happened to Bane.

If you go through the very Strange (pun intended) test, you are taken to a registration page. Once you register, you make your I.D. card - see mine below:

Once you create your registration card, it says that you will receive a package in the mail from the Human Preservation Project. I can't wait to see what it is!