You know that a product design and marketing is working well when it starts evolving into a conspiracy theory. According to as story published on the MTV site that is precisely what the new Nine Inch Nails Year Zero album is doing.

The album already has conspiracy theoriest and apocalypse watchers talking about a society on the edge of extinction where military police raid private residence, the State controls your thoughts bit brother style and the individual experiences a total loss of liberty.

This clever marketing pain which is like a mix of Aldus Huxley and George Orwell has involved the implantation of various websites that have been planted on the Internet.  An example is the really disturbing IamTryingToBelieve.com, which is dedicated to exploring Parepin, which is a drug that is being allegedly added to the water supply. Although it is supposed to be fiction it’s implication of bioterrorism has a ring of possibility.

The site also makes mention of citizens witnessing something called “The Presence,” which shows a giant god like hand defending from the heavens in a series of out of focus photographs. 

Also hidden on the site is a hidden e-mail address which once found sends information about Nine Inch Nails next preapocalyptic projects and also the location of other Nine Inch Nails sites. Members on a NIN fan site, EchoingtheSound.org, soon began to uncover even more sites, all seemingly unrelated upon first glance. Once tied together it seems that they all amount to creating a rather grim totalitarian picture of life in the United States circa the year 2022.

However the conspiracy was supposed to have been kick started with a t-shirt that was sold when the Nine Inch Nails last went on tour.  Apparently certainly letters and numbers on the shirt were highlighted and a secret message was spelled out to fans.

Popularity: 56% [?]

This entry was posted on Friday, January 18th, 2008 at 9:59 pm and is filed under Celebrities, Marketing, Product Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.