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So where exactly does the tease come in, you ask? In the form of covert clues, online challenges and real life adventures, all combining to create an epic, mysterious mythos centered around a product. This new form has been dubbed Alternative Reality Gaming, made most popular by the ambitious and imaginative Why So Serious? campaign for last summer's mega smash movie The Dark Knight.

42 Entertainment LLC in Pasadena, Calif. created the marketing genre in 2001 for the Steven Spielberg film A.I. Campaigns for the video game Halo 2 and the Nine Inch Nails album Year Zero brought buzz and acclaim. But the agency's Dark Knight campaign was a whole other animal, executed across 15 months, and incorporating numbers of Web sites and wild live events, that like a puzzle, reveal more and more, little by little, of the highly anticipated product.

Susan Bonds, 42's CEO, likens the targeted participants to Alice travelling down a rabbit hole. "Why this works is the fact that it is a mystery. It's the fact that you call a phone number and not know what you're going to get. It's magical."

A phone call is one way the Why So Serious? campaign began. Actually, it was hundreds of phone calls, made to one number that was written in the sky during San Diego's Comic-Con, a feeding frenzy for sci-fi and superhero fans, exactly the kind of people the game would appeal to. After calling the number, they were told they had to prove their worth to join the gang of The Joker, the villain in The Dark Knight. A day-of scavenger hunt, ending with a participant getting "kidnapped," happened from there.

But online and in other cities, the game was far from over. Participants staged faux political rallies for Gotham's district attorney, Harvey Dent, and dressed up like The Joker to pose in front of famous landmarks around the world, prompted by phone and Web messages. One element of the game had participants receive cakes at bakeries that had cell phones and items "from" The Joker baked inside. 42 also created loads of Web sites pertaining to Gotham businesses like the newspaper The Gotham Times and Rossi's Delicatessen, sites that guided visitors to more clues, and in some cases, were eventually "vandalized" by The Joker.

For consumers, rewards came with exclusive looks at Dark Knight photos and trailers. For the brand, the reward was getting an audience deeply invested in the back story of the product, and creating fervent word of mouth. In total, 42 Entertainment claims over 10 million people in over 75 countries played the game. The campaign recently won a Web award at SXSW, and was nominated for a Webby Award. The film itself became the second-highest grossing movie in North America of all time.

"Novelty alone doesn't guarantee you an audience," Bonds says. "You have to think how you're enticing people, how you're pulling them into the entertainment experience. There were literally hundreds of assets and engagement points. We're not throwing out a viral video hoping that it hits. We're not relying on any one thing. You want to punctuate the world with things that are very buzz worthy, where people can coalesce their passion and fuel speculation and involvement."

Bonds says it was also important to respect the intelligence of its audience, one key component of a successful teaser or ARG campaign.

"A lot of times people come up with clever ideas but want to hedge their bets and say 'Let's buy ads,'" Bonds says. "You have to be true to what you're doing to entice people, to let your experience pull people in."

Find a link to a video that gives an overview of the campaign here. The Los Angeles Times did a fun piece about the campaign last year. And here's a very thorough Wiki page that explains the complete Why So Serious? game play.

And don't forget to check out the Core Concepts article on teaser campaigns in the April 30th issue of Marketing News.