'The Day the Earth Stood Still' Goes Social

If the earth came under attack, what items would you save from extinction?

That’s the question posed in a social network application promoting the December 12 release of the sci-fi movie, “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” a remake of a 1951 film.

The application, called “Earth’s Vital List,” lets people identify up to 12 items they’d save if life on this world — as we know it — ever came to a crashing halt. A look at early picks shows those vital items range in scope from tweezers (“a girl can’t survive with a bushy brow”) to Disneyland (“you can’t leave Mickey and his friends behind.”)

Twentieth Century Fox teamed with Moxie Interactive to create the social application available on seven social networks, including MySpace and Facebook. It’s in 10 languages.

A social network member can identify an item, such as a pet, upload her own photos or select a stock photo from Flickr, identify the pet and give a reason for saving it, virtually share a list of items with friends, and vote on items selected by others. When the film is released in the United States on December 12, the top vital items will be disclosed on EarthVitalList.com.

The Earth Vital List application is intended to build awareness for the movie and to connect people from around the world, said Moxie Interactive CEO Kris Zagoria. “The viral piece [of this campaign] is going to be about engagement. How many people are adding and using the application. How many people are passing it along to their friends,” she said.

The application had to be tweaked to work on seven social networks. “They [networks] all have little nuances to how their application development platforms work,” Zagoria said. Each one handles status alerts and notifications slightly differently, for instance. And not all social networks support the same languages.

MySpace initially balked at letting its members grab photos from Flickr. That’s because MySpace, at the time, didn’t allow third-party services to access its application. “It really helped that we did a huge media buy with [MySpace,]” she said, pointing out that the social network eventually permitted Flickr photos to be uploaded.

Moxie handled the online creative; Zenith Media Services and Moxie managed domestic media, and Vizium was responsible for international media.