With 'Lost Experience,' ABC Moves Beyond the Island

Viewers who went to http://www.thehansofoundation.org found a professionally done, multimedia Web site that looks like it could belong to the Heritage Foundation or the Brookings Institution.

Run by the shadowy and entirely fake Alvar Hanso and based in Copenhagen, the fictitious foundation studies life extension, electromagnetism, genome studies and advanced mathematics. It set up an elaborate series of bunkers on the island to study human behavior, a la the Skinner Box. The survivors stumbled onto one bunker and mysteries slowly began to reveal themselves while raising new ones.

Like the island, the Hanso Foundation site contains clues to the Lost Experience game. Run in cooperation with networks in England, Australia and 22 other nations where "Lost" is seen, viewers can assemble clues that may give answers to the show's many puzzles. It is an intense, intercontinental, Internet game of sleuth with no prize other than knowledge.

Unlike other TV show marketing campaigns, this one enlists the show's writers. With the show's Web sites and the game, they have created an entire set of other stories -- parallel storylines -- that exist outside of the television show.

"This is a hybrid between marketing and content," Benson said. BMW tried a similar, simpler merger of content and marketing in 2001 with a series of commercials-cum-short-films by renowned directors such as Ang Lee that featured well-known actors, such as Clive Owen.

The campaign even has a real novel, called "The Bad Twin," authored by the fictitious Gary Troup and published by Disney's imprint, Hyperion Books. A "Lost" character is seen reading a manuscript of the book on the show.

ABC won't say who really authored the book -- fan speculation tends toward self-proclaimed "Lost" fan Stephen King -- but its success is no mystery. The hardcover ($13.17) was the 11th-best seller on Amazon.com on Friday.

To burrow deeper into the reality-within-a-reality, the Hanso Foundation considers "The Bad Twin" an attack on its founder. On Wednesday, ABC took out real ads in real newspapers to counter-attack the book.

"Don't Believe 'Bad Twin,' " read the ad on page A7 of The Washington Post. The ad contained no ABC or Disney identification, but The Post's ad department knew it was from ABC. The ad caused some concern in the newsroom because its appearance meant that The Post had advertised a phony group.

"We expect advertisers to identify themselves correctly because we don't want readers to be confused," said Eric Grant, a Post spokesman. "This advertisement did not raise a red flag."

As for the show's fans, they appear invested -- unless the elaborate marketing scheme goes too far.

Buddy Judge, 45, is a Los Angeles composer of music for movies and television. He was at first skeptical of the Lost Experience when he read about it on a fan forum, but once he went to the Hanso site and saw "the thought and care that went into it, I changed my mind," he wrote in an e-mail. He and his "Lost" buddies are playing the game, e-mailing and messaging each other when new clues appear.

But ABC is walking a fine line here, Judge and other fans warn. He said that speculation has emerged in some fan groups that there is an even more nefarious plan at work: It's all one big ad for Sprite. Evidence may be hidden in the name of one of the game's Web sites, Sublymonal.com -- the lemon-lime Sprite once advertised itself as the "lymon" drink.

"If the game turns out to be merely a means to push soda-pop, then I'm out," one fan wrote on a forum. "I don't mind a little cross-marketing. . . . But I do mind spending time trying to figure out a beverage commercial."