Fly Oceanic Airlines... Straight to the Bottom of the Ocean!

With a new season of "Lost" on the air, ABC is getting in gear with another promotion campaign centered on Oceanic Airlines, the carrier whose doomed Flight 815 crashed onto the mysterious island with our friends, the Losties. ABC previously conducted viral campaigns on the Web, with a fake Oceanic Airlines Web site and another one for the Dharma Initiative.

The new Oceanic Airlines effort is going more mainstream: Oceanic Airlines billboards have been spotted in Ames, Iowa among other places, and one newspaper story said that to add to the drama those billboards "were later 'defaced' to redirect those who saw them to another website with additional dramatic story elements and even clue hunting games to find out more information about storylines."

and there were bogus commercials for the airline on "Eli Stone," the show that followed "Lost." Scenes of pretty female flight attendants were interrupted by flitting black-and-white images of a man in a seemingly frantic state of mind, seeming to be a "Lost"-style passenger stranded in a horrific situation, trying to broadcast a message to the outside world. Also seen is a glimpse of part of an Oceanic Airlines plane underwater, perhaps at the bottom of the ocean. These ads also promote an Oceanic Airlines Web site, FlyOceanicAir.com.

UPDATE: I've checked out FlyOceanicAir.com, and it has the greeting from the flight attendants seen in the TV commercial, which is followed by a clip of the man we saw glimpses of in the commercial. Turns out he's the boyfriend of a flight attendant on Flight 815 and is looking to find answers regarding what happened to the doomed flight... and his message directs you to another site, Find 815. The site invites you to play an online game and join the mission of the man, Sam Thomas, to find out what happened to the flight and his girlfriend.

The FlyOceanicAir.com site also contains a press release that announces that Oceanic Airlines is resuming service.

The Lost Season 4 Premiere: Interesting Reading

As you're getting ready for Lost Season 4 premiere (or have watched it already), here are a couple of interesting articles for your reading pleasure.

Cracked.com delves into the mysteries of Lost and The Island, with its article "5 Questions the Lost Writers Need to Answer (And Why They Won't)."

And Entertainment Weekly's EW.com has a "Lost Preseason Cheat Sheet" to get you up to speed on the story thus far. Even though I've been watching the Lost specials last night and tonight, another refresher can't hurt, considering the dizzying array of multiple story lines and red herrings the series has going on.

"Lost" Season 4 Trailer and Series Recap - FREE on iTunes

If you want a refresher on the TV show "Lost" before Season 4 begins tomorrow night, iTunes is offering two free videos for you to download. Both are available at the iTunes store; scroll down to the section of the front page that say "free on iTunes" or something to that effect.

The first free "Lost" video is a Season 4 preview, the second is called "Lost in 8:15," which tries to sum up the entire series thus far. The second video sounds much less useful... anyone who's followed "Lost" knows that it's hard enough to summarize half a season of "Lost" in a one-hour show, much less three entire seasons in under 10 minutes. The creators realize this and have made the video a somewhat humorous recap narrated by a fast-talking woman who could easily do those car commercial voiceovers that explain 500 words of legalese in 22 seconds. ("Sun is pregnant. But Jin is sterile. What's up with that?")

But, if you've decided to get on board the "Lost" bandwagon and don't want to be totally, well, lost, this will help a bit.

You can also watch some of this same material on ABC's "Lost" Web site, which also features a "Locke music video." Now that sounds like fun...

The "Lost" season premiere kicks off with a special two-hour episode on January 31st, beginning at 8 p.m. Eastern time.