Yesterday afternoon, Mission Icefly commenced. The activity was part of the Test Subjects Needed ARG from 42 Entertainment, and by all accounts is a marketing campaign for Wrigley’s new flavor of their 5 Gum brand. Those in denial or simply itching for a good ARG to follow participated in the dead drop game, and we got a new viral site to show for it. Get the details after the break.
The website MissionIcefly.com was found when devices were mailed out to those that had signed up for TestSubjectsNeeded.com, a website run by the Human Preservation Project. The group is looking for subjects to undergo experiments to enhance their senses. The Mission Icefly site had a countdown that ended yesterday at Noon Pacific, revealing their Rescue subpage. This page had a list of cities and directions for finding the items at the dead drops across the country. You can see photos of the participates finding their copy of the item, an encased Icefly, on the official Mission Icefly Flickr Page. As each location checked in that their item was found, a video on the top of the page slowly became clearer. By the time all the dead drops were complete, the video was still in poor shape, but a link at the end could be seen: SurvivalCode.com, the next step in our journey.
On the Survival Code website, there’s a link back to the Test Subjects Needed website, a tantalizing to-be-launched link titled “Game Code Activation”, and a video featuring Terry O’Quinn, best known as John Locke from LOST, that teases what’s to come. The “Click to Start Your Journey” link takes you to The Genesis, which shows you the Mission Icefly video in full and properly edited. The video and O’Quinn’s narration don’t really say much, but the idea is that humans are loosing their senses, so they are searching for something to bring it back, which leads to the mysterious Icefly.
After the video plays, an artic landscape is shown, and you are enticed to click it. After a few clicks, you get to the door of some kind of compound, and then another countdown, this time ending on July 15th, again at Noon. Clicking on the countdown lets you set up your Survival Code profile using the profile you created for Test Subjects Needed. This profile looks to be a pivotal point in the impending game, as it logs your “Achievements & Commendations” There are also “Log Files”, which right now is just five consecutive pages of comic book or graphic novel featuring O’Quinn talking at the fictional Traelek Institute, presumably the location where the testing is being done.
This is all very curious. While O’Quinn says a lot during his two videos and comic book pages, none of it really seems to mean anything or tell us anything that can help us understand what is going on. There’s no mention of the gum or any brand, so of course there is speculation that this could still be viral marketing for something more interesting (i.e. The Dark Knight Rises). I don’t know if this campaign is pretentious or brilliant or both, but I’m definitely on board.
Let us know what you think of the new developments in the comments below!