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ABC launches viral marketing campaign for Lost

by Anna Johns, posted Jan 3rd 2008 5:26PM

lost; oceanic airlines
Check out the billboard in Portland, Oregon for the new season of Lost. A friend of mine, Chris, shot this photo recently.

As you can see, it's a billboard advertising Oceanic Air, which is the fictional airline in the series. The billboard includes the website FlyOceanicAir. Of course, I checked out the website and it is for Oceanic, but it appears to have been hijacked by a possible new character for the next season. There's a video message from a guy named 'Sam' who says he is looking for Sonya, a flight attendant who he also calls his "partner".

Sam's video has flashes of another website, Find815, which is Sam's personal effort to keep searching for flight 815, the Oceanic flight which crash landed on the island and started this whole fiasco. That website has a little challenge for fans-- to find the differences in two pictures of Sonya. It's pretty obvious, but I'll let you check it out without spoiling things.

While I thoroughly enjoy wacky marketing like this, I imagine that a lot of drivers in Portland fully believe there's a new airline that wants them to fly to Seoul, South Korea.

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Matt Heerema

There is one of these in Ames, IA (where I live). Is that a big deal?

January 06 2008 at 9:47 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Matt Heerema's comment
Janna

The cities relating to the billboards are directly equal to the hometowns of each surviving passenger. Check out lostpedia.

February 01 2008 at 2:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Dani

There is also a billboard off of I-95 in Miami. Looks like the LOST crew has been busy.

January 05 2008 at 8:48 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
dave

Here is the Knoxville, TN, picture of our billboard

http://daveandthomas.blogspot.com/2008/01/lost-viral-marketing-invades-our.html

January 05 2008 at 3:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
episodev

This you can see pictures of oceanic billboards here:
http://find815.blogspot.com/ it is believed there are two more.

January 04 2008 at 9:45 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
h8rain

I am/was a huge of Lost, but I am can barely remember what happened last season..... I will probably wait till the new season is on DVD, and watch it then

As far as the billboards go, I like the creative idea. This is not the first time for Lost to do something like this. They ran commercials for the ....one company (name escapes me), and a web site was setup for it.

January 04 2008 at 9:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to h8rain's comment
Dan

The Hanso Foundation was the other company. :)

January 04 2008 at 5:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Carissa

Am I the only person who watched Sci-Fi all weekend? There were Oceanic Airlines ads all during the holidays...I think they are great! Absolutely NO hint that they are from ABC or Lost. The ads just tell people to log onto flyoceanicair.com. Talk about great marketing. Its the kind of thing we can only dream of during a writers strike!!!

January 03 2008 at 11:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Darin

The password to the mailbox? Did you try "the numbers?"

January 03 2008 at 11:13 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
TVTom

Read the press release on FlyOceanicAir.com. There is a phone number (818-460-5520) that has a recorded message. You are unable to leave a message but you are able to try to access "your voice mail" Mail box 815# seemed to be a real mail box but I could not guess the password.

January 03 2008 at 9:52 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Franklin

Oceanic isn't just the name of the fictitious airline in LOST, the name has also been used for several, several years in many other TV shows and movies, prior to LOST. (If a script needs to refer to an airline, especially one that has a disaster, "Oceanic Airlines" is the name to use, much like the telephone prefix "555" is used when a script calls for a phone number.) The Oceanic name happened to become popular and well-known thanks to LOST. So now maybe other productions will have to come up with another made-up airline.

Since the 1960s, in the universe of television shows and movies, Ocean has been in service -- and they have a terrible air safety track record.

January 03 2008 at 8:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Kurifurisan

nevermind...I clicked the embedded link for the billboard and found the location.

January 03 2008 at 7:16 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply

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