2011 SAMMY Award Finalist, Best Branded Viral Video The Visionaire Group for Lionsgate The Last Exorcism
publication date: Aug 30, 2011
Best Branded Viral Video The Visionaire Group for Lionsgate The Last Exorcism
Agency:The Visionaire Group Brand: The Last Exorcism Executives Involved in The Campaign: Lionsgate Tim Palen, Co-President, Theatrical Marketing Danielle DePalma, Vice President, Theatrical Marketing David Hayes, Manager, Theatrical Marketing Courtney Harris, Manager, Theatrical Marketing The Visionaire Group Dimitry Ioffe, Creative Director Maria Chung, Producer Michael Beynart, Video Animator Christophe Eagleton, Sound Designer Campaign Brief: To promote its horror film The Last Exorcism, Lionsgate teamed up with The Visionaire Group to spread word of the film’s August 27, 2010 release. The challenges in raising awareness for this particular film were many as it was a low-budget movie that had neither a star-studded cast nor was derived from recognizable source material. Given these obstacles, TVG worked in concert with Lionsgate to develop a viral campaign that modernized the concept of demonic possession via the social media tools of the day. Our goal was to reach the target audience of core horror movie fans, the much sought-after 18-25 set of both males and females. To effectively engage this very ad-savvy demographic, we determined it would be easiest to produce video content that quickly teased this unknown title while refraining from any hard-core branding. YouTube was the platform of choice from the very beginning as it was vital to leverage the site’s huge audience to push this piece viral a week before release. Great care was taken in tagging the video and seeding it as a response to other similarly themed videos (Chatroulette, scare, etc.). The ease with which anyone can embed the video from YouTube was key in spreading the word at lightning speed, as well. Metrics for success were the numbers of views of the video itself, the amount of earned media and, although used marginally, the film’s opening weekend box office receipts, the industry gold standard for a movie’s success in the marketplace. The central concept was to produce a video of a girl who looks to be in desperate need of an exorcism and then grab webcam viewers’ reactions in real-time to string together for a quick best-of compilation reel. To achieve this, we made expert use of an actress, green screen video, classic special effects editing and a relatively easy programming trick to swap out the webcam feed on social site Chatroulette for a video loop. Users thought they were getting a treat when the cute girl chatting with them teasingly unbuttons her blouse, but it proved to be more of a trick when she suffers what appears to be a complete demonic possession. After capturing reactions over the course of a couple of weekends, a quick edit was made to string together the best reactions and, after being uploaded to YouTube a little over a week before the film’s release to hit the public consciousness at just the right moment, a classic example of the power of branded viral video content was born. There was no paid media pushed out against this. Any visibility it received was due solely to word-of-mouth via viral sharing and earned media. The Chatroulette reaction video on YouTube was a huge and instant success, receiving over 1 million views within 72 hours of posting with no supporting paid media. As of the date of this submission (6/23/11), the standalone video has surpassed 5 million views and is still climbing. The other metric of success used for this campaign was earned media and the Chatroulette reaction video received its fair share of acclaim from the press at such outlets as Mashable, EW, Adweek, NY Mag, MovieViral, The Viral Trend, Forbes, among many, many others. In terms of box office success, The Last Exorcism achieved a startling $20.3 million opening weekend, pitting it head-to-head against another opening film, Takers. This was an astounding achievement for Lionsgate and considered a surprise hit for the industry. |
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