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.
Giveaway Monday: That '70s Show The Complete Series Stash box set
Giveaway Monday: Back to You season one DVD
Six shows that I am watching pretty regularly this season
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
1-03-2008 @ 6:35PM
Kurifurisan said...
Anna,
I live in Wilsonville. Where in Portland is that billboard? As a Lost fanatic, I want to get take a picture for myself.
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1-03-2008 @ 7:14PM
Locke said...
As a Lost fanatic I'm playing it (the new viral marketing campaign) and it's really fun. It makes you feel like a sleuth!
Greetings.
http://www.soulhospital.com
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1-03-2008 @ 7:16PM
Kurifurisan said...
nevermind...I clicked the embedded link for the billboard and found the location.
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1-03-2008 @ 8:44PM
Franklin said...
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.
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1-03-2008 @ 9:53PM
TVTom said...
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.
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1-03-2008 @ 11:24PM
Carissa said...
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!!!
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1-04-2008 @ 4:02AM
Darin said...
The password to the mailbox? Did you try "the numbers?"
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1-04-2008 @ 9:32AM
h8rain said...
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.
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1-04-2008 @ 5:43PM
Dan said...
The Hanso Foundation was the other company. :)
1-04-2008 @ 6:27PM
Eddie said...
This you can see pictures of oceanic billboards here:
http://find815.blogspot.com/ it is believed there are two more.
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1-05-2008 @ 3:51AM
dave said...
Here is the Knoxville, TN, picture of our billboard
http://daveandthomas.blogspot.com/2008/01/lost-viral-marketing-invades-our.html
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1-05-2008 @ 8:51PM
Dani said...
There is also a billboard off of I-95 in Miami. Looks like the LOST crew has been busy.
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1-06-2008 @ 9:47PM
Matt Heerema said...
There is one of these in Ames, IA (where I live). Is that a big deal?
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2-01-2008 @ 2:57PM
Janna said...
The cities relating to the billboards are directly equal to the hometowns of each surviving passenger. Check out lostpedia.