As most of you are quite aware, ILoveBees.com was a viral marketing scheme sponsored by Microsoft to promote the then-upcoming release of Halo 2. ILoveBees.com was an Internet phenomenon that had people actually locating public phones in their cities and awaiting a phone call. The East Bay Express recently went behind the scenes with 4orty 2wo, the creative team behind ILoveBees, and gave us a peek at what's going on inside their wacky heads.

Forty Two has taken alt-marketing to an entirely new level. Imagine, if you will, a campaign so covert that it mentions neither the product nor the client, one in which none of those responsible acknowledge the campaign exists until after the product is launched, in which packs of random people run all over America to answer ringing pay phones in order to piece together a futuristic radio drama that ends where Halo 2 takes off. All this is the work of a marketing firm that swears it will never use the same tactics twice, and whose services so closely resemble art that it is represented by one of Hollywood's top talent agencies.