LOST promotion and online story/experience

Not exactly an ARG, but over the last month or so leading up to the LOST season 4 start tonight, the show has produced a promotional "interactive experience" as a part of their marketing plan.

In addition to a website, www.flyoceanicair.com, part of the marketing plan involves billboards for Oceanic Airlines (that went up in early January) which were later hit by graffiti with "FIND815.com"



The find815.com website has a series of 5 chapters on it (just click on "story so far" to see all the parts), telling the story of a former Oceanic Airlines employee, Sam, who is looking for his girlfriend Sonia who was a stewardess on Oceanic Flight 815. The videos are quite entertaining.

http://www.find815.com



The story is told online through a series of video blogs by the main character, Sam, scenes implemented as online Flash programs - where you can find clues about LOST, read Sam's emails, listen to his phone messages, etc. In the story we watch Sam getting on a ship and travelling to the South India Sea. Each step also includes a Flash game that you play to get a code word to then see a Season 4 clue. For ARG types, there are some deeper well-hidden puzzles to discover and solve, but you can enjoy the videos and Flash scenes without digging for the deeper stuff.

This blog discusses many of the things uncovered on find815.com
http://find815.blogspot.com

Unlike the "Lost Experience" ARG which gave backstory and mythology they would never get to during the main LOST show, Sam's story is meant to be more directly related to the coming season (at least that is what a marketing executive said), with the implication that Sam might even appear on the show (though I have not seen this confirmed).

Here is an article interviewing a marketing executive about the campaign
http://find815.blogspot.com/2008/01/article-on-find-815-game.html