As a bootstrapping entrepreneur, staying on top of the latest advertising trends is a must. It’s a must because in today’s society, people see over 5,000 ads per day. There is just no way the average person can pay attention to more than 1 or 2 of them. As a result, big corporations spend big dollars researching how to get consumers to pay attention. There is no reason why entrepreneurs can’t take advantage of this research.

Every few years, this research leads to 1 or 2 new advertising techniques that become trendy because some highly paid ad exec found it to be effective.    In order to take advantage of this, you must test out each of these advertising techniques and see which ones will increase the rate at which your business grows.  In a previous post, I suggested that next big thing in viral advertising for entrepreneurs was nonlinear and multi-channel storytelling.   Not even a week later, a big corporation is providing a fantastic example of executing a viral advertising campaign based on one of these techniques.

The new Superman movie is using a multi-channel storytelling technique to go viral by combining outdoor advertising, microsites, and video.  To start, the new Superman movie is using a billboard with an encrypted message on it.  The only way to decrypt the message is by visiting the Deep Space Radio Wave Project microsite.  Once you decrypt the message it provides you with an IP address that redirects to another microsite I Will Find Him.  On this site you will find another encrypted message that displays a countdown clock.  Many news organizations are speculating what will happen once the countdown is complete.

If you look up the records of the I Will Find Him website, you notice that it was created less than a month ago on March 21, 2013 and the Deep Space website was created on November 28th 2012.

This information shows you that planning started at least 5 months ago, but final execution did not start until less than a month ago.  I believe this will be a common theme in both multi-channel and nonlinear advertising.

The YouTube trailer for this campaign was released on April 14th, and within 2 days it has already started going viral with nearly a half million views. As a matter of fact, the view count has doubled since I watched it last night around 9:30 pm. It is exactly 4:00 am as I hit the publish button on this blog post. It should be fun to watch how this viral advertising campaign for the new Superman movie unfolds.

Watch the trailer below: