Lost finished it’s first season 7 days ago and already ABC has a clever viral website promoting the second season. Go to the official Oceanic Airlines site (oceanic-air.com) and you’ll see what I mean. Most of the links on the site are dead ends, but there is a clever, hidden feature:
1) Type Hurley’s lottery numbers (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42) into the “Travellers” section on the bottom of the home page and hit “Find”
2) Once your on the Seating Chart page, click on the bottom-most seat in the lottery rows, in sequential order (4, 8, 15, 16, 23, 42)
This is an incredibly clever viral site. Not much information to go on and very spooky/moody just like the show.
It looks like the viral is successful too: Technorati; Blogpulse; Icerocket; Blogdigger.
It must be great fun working on such a cool show like Lost. I’d really like to do something as viral and innovative as the Oceanic Air site for a TBS show.
UPDATE: A fellow named Bridge left me a note in the comments asking me to check out the commented code of the “seating chart” page. The commented code is below.
If you are reading this note PLEASE get word to my wife, Christina Smith that her husband, Jake survived the crash of Oceanic Flight #815 along with 47 others. Darling, I miss you so much and dream of the day I can see your face again. The very thought of that day is all that keeps me going here. Please don’t forget me!
Jake Smith
UPDATE II: More goodies in the source code.
If anyone should find this message, please get word to Sandra Rafflethorpe of Palm Avenue in Lewiston, Idaho that her sister, Sally is alive and stranded on an island somewhere in the South Pacific. Please send help soon. Things are bad. And they’re getting worse…
Sally
I survived a horrific plane crash and am stranded on an island somewhere Northeast of Australia and Southwest of Hawaii. In the event that I am never found, please forward word of my fate to my parents.
Robert D. West, of Santa Barbara, California, USA survived a horrific plane crash and is stranded on an island somewhere Northeast of Australia and Southwest of Hawaii. In the event that I am never found, please forward word of my fate to parents, Mr. and Mrs. John West, of Tucson Arizona. Thank you.
Robert West
This is Bob Jones, of Tulsa Oklahoma and I would like to inform the First National Bank of Enid that I will be late making my September mortgage payment as I am STRANDED ON A FRIGGIN’ ISLAND IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE! Please have the government send a search team immediately or don’t all the taxes I pay cover an expense like that?
BJ
UPDATE III: Clicking on the actual numbers on the Seating Chart page, in Hurley’s lottery order, gives you a cool teaser video trailer. Still trying to find Rob’s easter egg from the comments.
UPDATE IV: HUGE SPOILER!!! Copy all and paste into Outlook or another application from the homepage. You’ll get an image that’s a page from a yet-to-be-shot script. Here’s a link to the image.
UPDATE V: Here’s a link to the map of the island that appears when you click on Shannon’s seat.
UPDATE VI: All new updates, and I have one, are at this new post: Oceanic Airlines Update.
Check out the source code for that page… interesting note coded into it.
Thanks, Bridge!
Keep looking around in those Source files.. Off the Main page (http://www.oceanic-air.com/home.htm) there are at lease two more messages at the bottom. (Thanks to Ron Santo)
Thanks for the additional tip. Have I found them all?
That’s as many as I have, my favorite being the one from Bob Jones. It’s to bad Sam Kinison is dead, I think he would make a great “Bob Jones” for season II.
Maybe Dennis Leary is available? Dennis Leary on LOST… there’s an idea.
Killer. I really do appreciate your comments.
Cool!
Those “secret” messages are visible on the homepage; CSS was used to hide them beneath the yellow box. There’s a cool Firefox extension called “Nuke Anything” which lets you remove any web object; by removing the yellow box with that extension, I made those messages visible.
Holy LIVING @#&$!!!
On the apology letter, a little thing will appear on the left side of it. drag it onto the screen and you will be reading a PAGE FROM THE SCREENPLAY OF AN EPISODE OF LOST IN WHICH THEY DESCRIBE THE MONSTER!!!! CHARLIE COMES IN CONTACT WITH IT…I DON’T KNOW IF THIS WAS UNUSED OR IF IT’S STILL GOING TO BE USED OR WHAT!!! THERE ARE COMMENTS WRITTEN NEXT TO THE DESCRIPTION SAYING “NOT YET!” AND THE DESCRIPTION IS CROSSED OUT!!! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK BECAUSE THESE ARE MASSIVE, BLOATED SPOILERS!!!!
Also, search the name written next to the screenplay….gives more clues to what the monster is!
A nifty tool, Josh. And a very interesting easter egg, Rob. I’ve gotta try that out.
My Blog Log
A week or so ago I signed up for My Blog Log just to see what I could learn about my site. It seemed like a good idea to track click-throughs from my post and on my site and the code was simple enough to add, so I did. I honestly didn’t think …
I did some screen caps and found another viral marketing site it seems….
http://www.markpierce.com/archives/2005_06.html
Shameless plug for Oceanic Airlines Flight 815
Hello readers of the “Creating Passionate Users”blog. I’ve taken the gauntlet of Kathy Sierra’s free-range post and trackbacked that entry. I hope you enjoy my discussion of the ABC show Lost and their viral marketing efforts….
Locke’s seat? I can’t get Locke’s seat to do anything. Mars seat though…that’s an entirely different story. That one is creepy.
Anyway, I was just commenting to see anybody could let me know what Locke’s seat is supposed to do.
Clicking on Ed Mars’s seat makes an ID card flicker accross the screen. It’s hard to see but there are two different photos. I used print preview (several trys). One photo looks like after he was hit with the suitcase. The other photo doesn’t look like him at all.
Most all the seats do more than one thing… for example: the first time you click on Shannon’s seat it brings up the map… then after you get rid of the map, when you click it again (up to three times, I think), it brings up Sahid’s… well, I’m not sure if it’s a Passport or an ID, but it gets more clear each time you click it….
On charlie’s seat, the first time I clicked it I got the Journal/Diary thing… but then I revisted the page and the first time I clicked it I got a DriveShaft backstage pass… I didn’t get the Diary until the second time I clicked it.
Needless to say, the damned thing seems finicky.
Charlies seat is 29C. That are all the seats I could get to light up before it just quit. I got Jack, Rose, Boone, Shannon, Ed, Locke, Kate and Charlie in that order. I’m not even sure how I got the seats to light up in the first place. This is my first try to find anything on Oceanic Air. I was unaware of such a teaser game until today. (July 10th) Anything else I could learn?
if you go to the seating chart,
click on pre-board check-in
then drag the letters into the box to spell out ” OTHER MAN”
you will see a clip
Click on the Pre-Board Check-In green button on the bottom of the seating chart and drag the letters to spell “OTHER MAN” and you get a little show.
Oceanic Airlines Update
A quick update to my enormous Oceanic Airlines Flight 815 post from last month. I’d put the update there, but the page is getting awfully crowded. Besides, the new information comes directly from two commenters this afternoon.
1) Go to the se…
I translated most of the wierd map some is faded away so i couldn’t read it very well but this is what it says
With reflects Of argrut.. Sea of the reflech changfan, At the edge of A tang a blue interuite regret
Vis-a-vis with the wind
The sea u’ onvat to dance along the clear gulfs… With money reflections
The crater
dimension wild
its corns moving
blue lagoon blues
slope exposes
Reefs coral