By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 13, 2006; D01
Start with the one thing you know is real: "Lost" is a television drama about the survivors of a made-up crash of a fictitious airline's jumbo jet on a South Pacific island found on no map.
After that, nothing is certain in the expanding realm of ABC's hit Wednesday night mystery.
The network has set up a complex system of Web sites for phony organizations, launched an international treasure hunt, commissioned a novel by an unidentified author and taken out ads for bogus issues in real newspapers -- including this one -- in a conspiracy to extend the show's fictional world into the real one.
Hoping to keep "Lost" viewers hooked during the summer rerun doldrums, ABC has created an "alternate-reality game" of a scope heretofore unseen in television marketing. "The Lost Experience" is designed to create a parallel world of fresh content outside the show and plant hints via the Internet that the network hopes will lead viewers right up to the September launch of the show's third season.
"We have always wanted to approach 'Lost' in marketing as if it's real," said Michael Benson, ABC executive vice president of marketing.
Technology, specifically the increasing popularity of high-speed Internet, has aided the ruse in a way that would not have been possible only a few years ago. Also, the Internet's ability to deliver TV-quality programming has broken down barriers between content and marketing at ABC, owned by Walt Disney Co.
First, though, the TV show.
"Lost," which debuted in fall 2004, is an anomaly in prime-time television: a bona fide hit that has created a cult following. It chronicles the lives of the 44 known survivors of the crash of Oceanic Air Flight 815 from Sydney to Los Angeles, as they struggle to survive on an island populated by supernatural forces, a monster of some sort and a group of predatory, spooky "Others." To add to the mystery, the island is pocked with bunkers set up for strange social experiments, in which they may be taking part. Or not.
The show has averaged about 15 million viewers a week during its first two seasons, according to Nielsen Media Research, placing it solidly within the top 20 prime-time programs.
Even with its success, the show's ratings will drop by half during summer repeats, the network estimates, so ABC is keen to keep viewers interested until the fall.
"Lost" and its many enigmas have unfolded slowly with the aid of flashbacks that reveal the often-overlapping back stories of each character. Each story line suggests several others and it's that ground that ABC is exploiting in its game.
The Lost Experience was launched during a commercial break in the May 3 broadcast of "Lost" with a real-looking commercial for "The Hanso Foundation."
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."
