Sony Pictures
Agency: Trigger LLC
Brand: The Karate Kid
Executives Involved in The Campaign: Wendy Feldman, Dwight Caines, Elias Plishner
Campaign Brief: A couple of key objectives
for The Karate Kid digital marketing campaign were to drive consumer immersion
with our brand and generate awareness via social network activities. We focused
efforts on kids, teens, young adults and parents, and looked to develop a
specific mobile program to reach those core audiences. We knew that gaming was
a primary activity for kids; kids and teens are digitally savvy; teens and
young adults are early adopters and heavily engaged in social networking;
parents engage in casual gaming and utilize mobile devices as “passback”
programming with their kids.
We created a free iPhone/iPad application that touched on many of the
behavioral dynamics showcased by each of these core demographics. The
application is a casual game with social network connectivity via Facebook. It
is composed of five different mini-games relating to martial arts training
exercises and is available in twelve languages worldwide. Each game is aligned
to a specific virtue of Kung Fu as demonstrated in the film by Jackie Chan and Jaden
Smith: patience, courage, endurance, perseverance, and will. The individual
games also take advantage of the unique game play features offered by the
iPhone/iPad devices such as the accelerometer, gesture-based movements, and
iPod music playback. Users can choose to enjoy a single game or multiple games,
yet still garner achievements and increase their skill level. They can also
share their scores and achievements on Facebook and invite their friends to try
as well.
In anticipation of the film’s release, we timed our worldwide launch of the
free game to coincide with the release of the iPad device on April 3. Since we
were one of the very first developers to design an engaging gaming experience
for this platform, we had gained key storefront placement within iTunes. The
storefront placement helped generate awareness among all audiences for our
film, and enabled us to become one of the top downloads for free games during
our promotional window. The volume of downloads steadily increased throughout
our promotional window, and by opening day of the film in the US, we exceeded
our download goal by over a 5x multiple. Word of mouth on the game also showed
us that consumers were sharing their experience with The Karate Kid application
with their family and friends.
The mobile application was something offered in all markets and was the main
focus of our entire mobile campaign for the film’s release worldwide. The film
was a box office success both domestically and internationally, and the free
mobile application helped contribute to that accomplishment. The Karate Kid
application is currently the most successful theatrical iPhone/iPad game from
Sony Pictures to date. With the synchronized launch of the iPad device, the
inclusion of social networking features and multi-game functionality, and brand
integration, the free game application is certainly an award-worthy competitor
and should be given due consideration for its respective categories.
Link to
Your Creative Materials: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-karate-kid/id364298872?mt=8
http://www.karatekid-themovie.com/site/#/mobile
