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Sony pictures case_study

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Newsworks
Newsworks

The campaign promoted the new Ghostbusters film by placing iconic elements from the franchise in high footfall locations like London Waterloo station. A partnership with Metro newspaper amplified this through advertorials, competitions, and displays that reported strange happenings at the station. This generated over 50 million impressions on social media and boosted interest in the film by 10%. The campaign was a success, with the film becoming the UK's number 1 movie its opening weekend and grossing over £10 million.

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Sony Pictures - Ghostbusters Executive summary: Summer is a fiercely competitive time for film releases. To cut through this clutter we worked with Metro, JC Decaux and Snapchat to produce a ground breaking cross media campaign that made Ghostbusters the talk of the (Ghost) town. The result was a social media frenzy and a £10m+ box office. Background and objectives: I ain’t afraid of no competition The summer months are a key period for cinema going and this summer was arguably the busiest yet. Working on Sony Pictures new Ghostbusters film this became particularly apparent with the film releasing on the same date as Ice Age Collision Course and just one week after Tarzan. There had been a gap of almost 30 years since the last instalment of Ghostbusters but despite that Nielsen tracking showed that awareness of the franchise was high across all audiences. The challenge was more around interest with the some apprehension amongst older groups about the remake and younger audiences lacking any real engagement with the brand. We needed to make sure we overcame those challenges with a media campaign that would reignite people’s love for the franchise and bring in a new generation of fans. But more importantly we needed to do it with a sense of scale and stature to ensure we weren’t lost in the sea of competitive releases. Insight: Seeing is believing when it comes to Ghosts The key to success was in understanding the drivers of the franchise fondness and the barriers that the new film might face. Focus groups and surveys revealed that they were one and the same thing. It was the fun, iconic things from the first film – the car, the logo, the soundtrack and the ghosts – that they most loved and that they were worried would be missing from the latest release. From that point we knew that the job for media was to remind audiences that this was the return of something great which still had so many of the elements from the original that audiences knew, loved and importantly could get excited about. However, with so many sequels coming out around the same time it was likely that some of them would adopt a similar approach. If we were going to cut through this noise and get people more excited about Ghostbusters we needed to go beyond their standard tell approach. We needed to actually walk the talk. Bring those elements to life for audiences and deliver them with fame and stature. The idea of placing iconic Ghostbusters assets in high footfall locations was born and after a lot of analysis London Waterloo, Birmingham Bullring and Manchester Piccadilly were selected.
Crucially though we recognised that it was no good having a handful of vanity projects that only a few people would see. We need to amplify this activity to deliver a scale that would deliver real impact on the box office result. Newsbrands offered us the perfect platform to make this happen. It had the reach and scale we needed but also provided the tactical opportunities and content hungry audience we were after. Based on their reach and index against both Adults 16-34 and Parents of 7-15’s Metro were selected as our Newsbrand partner for this activity. The Plan: There’s something strange in the neighbourhood The campaign was built around the three installations with the focal point being our Ghostbusters takeover of London’s busiest train station, Waterloo. Running from the Monday prior to release the takeover consisted of a huge Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a pop-up NY subway station, slimed poles, floor vinyls, hanging banners, ticket barriers, tunnel wraps, business cards and Snapchat geofilters. To complement and amplify this activity we ran a 6 day partnership with Metro comprising advertorials, competitions, phone lines and high impact display. To tease the Waterloo activity we started things on the Friday with an advertorial feature. Made to look like an editorial piece it reported strange happenings at Waterloo Station with customers and staff reporting an increasingly long list of spooky goings on at the station. Readers were prompted to call a special Ghostbusters “Who You Gonna Call” Hotline, where they were met with a recorded message left by the films receptionist, played by Chris Hemsworth. On the Monday morning we wanted Ghostbusters to be the first thing that greeted commuters everywhere so we started the day with a front page takeover of the paper, including a media first where we took over the masthead, replacing the “O” with the iconic Ghostbusters logo. This wasn’t
an easy sell and required the buy in of the editor - who, thankfully, was big a Ghostbusters fan and loved the idea. The front page also featured a competition earpiece where readers could win a once in a lifetime Ghostbusters experience to New York. To follow up on the initial tease activity and show the whole country what was happening we ran a full-page feature in Tuesday’s edition. This revealed the huge scale of the Waterloo activity with a write up, supporting images and a further push to the Ghostbusters Hotline. To turn this around in time we had Metro and JC Decaux working together to ensure relevant images were taken and supplied. Further competition pieces ran across the rest of the week in paper and online, culminating on Friday where we also ran a full age display ad in paper to really encourage cinema footfall over the weekend. Results The audience response was phenomenal with huge amounts of people engaging with the activity. The positive sentiment generated saw a 10% rise in interest in the film compared to the week before the activity started
- Reach of over 6.8m people for the Metro activity alone (NRS) - The Ghostbusters hotline had over 362,000 calls - The competition in Metro had over 9,000 entries – completely busting Metro’s usual competition benchmarks of 5,000 - Over 50m “Ghostbusters Waterloo” related impressions on Twitter alone – including an organic trend. Most importantly Ghostbusters was the UK number 1 film on opening weekend and went on to out- gross both Tarzan and Ice Age. We delivered a final box office of over £10m, marking us out as the leading international territory across the world. Client View Stuart Williams, Sony Pictures Marketing Director “This was the most challenging campaign we’ve undertaken, both in terms of a new approach and the logistics & execution. We wanted to create something that would get people talking and generate excitement around the new film and, to that end, the results surpassed our best expectations.”

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Sony pictures case_study

  • 1. Sony Pictures - Ghostbusters Executive summary: Summer is a fiercely competitive time for film releases. To cut through this clutter we worked with Metro, JC Decaux and Snapchat to produce a ground breaking cross media campaign that made Ghostbusters the talk of the (Ghost) town. The result was a social media frenzy and a £10m+ box office. Background and objectives: I ain’t afraid of no competition The summer months are a key period for cinema going and this summer was arguably the busiest yet. Working on Sony Pictures new Ghostbusters film this became particularly apparent with the film releasing on the same date as Ice Age Collision Course and just one week after Tarzan. There had been a gap of almost 30 years since the last instalment of Ghostbusters but despite that Nielsen tracking showed that awareness of the franchise was high across all audiences. The challenge was more around interest with the some apprehension amongst older groups about the remake and younger audiences lacking any real engagement with the brand. We needed to make sure we overcame those challenges with a media campaign that would reignite people’s love for the franchise and bring in a new generation of fans. But more importantly we needed to do it with a sense of scale and stature to ensure we weren’t lost in the sea of competitive releases. Insight: Seeing is believing when it comes to Ghosts The key to success was in understanding the drivers of the franchise fondness and the barriers that the new film might face. Focus groups and surveys revealed that they were one and the same thing. It was the fun, iconic things from the first film – the car, the logo, the soundtrack and the ghosts – that they most loved and that they were worried would be missing from the latest release. From that point we knew that the job for media was to remind audiences that this was the return of something great which still had so many of the elements from the original that audiences knew, loved and importantly could get excited about. However, with so many sequels coming out around the same time it was likely that some of them would adopt a similar approach. If we were going to cut through this noise and get people more excited about Ghostbusters we needed to go beyond their standard tell approach. We needed to actually walk the talk. Bring those elements to life for audiences and deliver them with fame and stature. The idea of placing iconic Ghostbusters assets in high footfall locations was born and after a lot of analysis London Waterloo, Birmingham Bullring and Manchester Piccadilly were selected.
  • 2. Crucially though we recognised that it was no good having a handful of vanity projects that only a few people would see. We need to amplify this activity to deliver a scale that would deliver real impact on the box office result. Newsbrands offered us the perfect platform to make this happen. It had the reach and scale we needed but also provided the tactical opportunities and content hungry audience we were after. Based on their reach and index against both Adults 16-34 and Parents of 7-15’s Metro were selected as our Newsbrand partner for this activity. The Plan: There’s something strange in the neighbourhood The campaign was built around the three installations with the focal point being our Ghostbusters takeover of London’s busiest train station, Waterloo. Running from the Monday prior to release the takeover consisted of a huge Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, a pop-up NY subway station, slimed poles, floor vinyls, hanging banners, ticket barriers, tunnel wraps, business cards and Snapchat geofilters. To complement and amplify this activity we ran a 6 day partnership with Metro comprising advertorials, competitions, phone lines and high impact display. To tease the Waterloo activity we started things on the Friday with an advertorial feature. Made to look like an editorial piece it reported strange happenings at Waterloo Station with customers and staff reporting an increasingly long list of spooky goings on at the station. Readers were prompted to call a special Ghostbusters “Who You Gonna Call” Hotline, where they were met with a recorded message left by the films receptionist, played by Chris Hemsworth. On the Monday morning we wanted Ghostbusters to be the first thing that greeted commuters everywhere so we started the day with a front page takeover of the paper, including a media first where we took over the masthead, replacing the “O” with the iconic Ghostbusters logo. This wasn’t
  • 3. an easy sell and required the buy in of the editor - who, thankfully, was big a Ghostbusters fan and loved the idea. The front page also featured a competition earpiece where readers could win a once in a lifetime Ghostbusters experience to New York. To follow up on the initial tease activity and show the whole country what was happening we ran a full-page feature in Tuesday’s edition. This revealed the huge scale of the Waterloo activity with a write up, supporting images and a further push to the Ghostbusters Hotline. To turn this around in time we had Metro and JC Decaux working together to ensure relevant images were taken and supplied. Further competition pieces ran across the rest of the week in paper and online, culminating on Friday where we also ran a full age display ad in paper to really encourage cinema footfall over the weekend. Results The audience response was phenomenal with huge amounts of people engaging with the activity. The positive sentiment generated saw a 10% rise in interest in the film compared to the week before the activity started
  • 4. - Reach of over 6.8m people for the Metro activity alone (NRS) - The Ghostbusters hotline had over 362,000 calls - The competition in Metro had over 9,000 entries – completely busting Metro’s usual competition benchmarks of 5,000 - Over 50m “Ghostbusters Waterloo” related impressions on Twitter alone – including an organic trend. Most importantly Ghostbusters was the UK number 1 film on opening weekend and went on to out- gross both Tarzan and Ice Age. We delivered a final box office of over £10m, marking us out as the leading international territory across the world. Client View Stuart Williams, Sony Pictures Marketing Director “This was the most challenging campaign we’ve undertaken, both in terms of a new approach and the logistics & execution. We wanted to create something that would get people talking and generate excitement around the new film and, to that end, the results surpassed our best expectations.”