The international popularity of the Harry Potter franchise has spawned books, movies, theme parks, a Broadway show, and now — a new way to communicate through Facebook Portal. At its core, Portal is a video-conferencing device that helps users build closer relationships with their loved ones.
Portal collaborated with the smash stage play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, to bring the magic of the Broadway show to Portal calls through a unique AR feature that gives wannabe witches and wizards the power to do magic together.
To get people excited about the experience, we created a multi-touchpoint Instagram campaign to activate across our owned social and influencer channels. The campaign featured a spell-casting, Portal-using superfan known as the Historian of Portal Arts. This Historian was our common thread throughout the campaign and demonstrated the power of Portal while also bringing together some incredible influencers and creators. And while Muggles might not be able to do magic, through Portal we reminded Harry Potter fans that the real magic is the connections you make by casting spells with your friends and family.
Our goals were:
● Capitalize on the IP recognition of the Harry Potter franchise to extend that positive, fan-like
energy into our feeds.
● Encourage the community to utilize the Harry Potter-themed AR filters and backgrounds and
experience Curtain Call.
● Increase engagement with current and prospective customers across our social media
channels.
In total, we created 9 unique posts, 31 total in-feed, 14 Stories per platform, and 6 IG reels.
We kicked off our campaign with an electric teaser, followed up with a 3-part social series over IG led by our Historian of Portal Arts as he demonstrated the finer points of Portal magic. In each episode, he connects with a friend or family member over Portal to highlight a different piece of Portal magic.
But the real magic of the campaign was when we began to leverage creators and influencers. Throughout, we shared Portal devices with a diverse range of families and had them engage through the Happy Potter AR experience. Parents loved it. Kids loved it even more.
Then, on the biggest day of the year in the Potterverse, Harry Potter’s birthday on July 31, we launched an enormous celebration for the anniversary of the play called, The Cursed Child Anniversary Spectacular! This once-in-a-lifetime event brought together many beloved Harry Potter influencers and creators from around the world through the connective power of Portal. Over the course of a week, these creators engaged with our Historian and created unique content for our witching-and-wizarding community.
The Harry Potter campaign drove incredibly high positive brand sentiment through culturally relevant narratives and engaging content. In short, our Harry Potter-obsessed audience loved it.
Engagement averaged 64%, plus 4 million impressions, and influencer content drove 99% Positive Brand Sentiment.
Over the course of the campaign, we had 17 creators develop 97 posts generating 1.3MM impressions. Two of the top-5 performing posts were influencer posts on Instagram, indicating that the community continues to react most enthusiastically to real-life people using the product.
By leveraging a mix of niche Harry Potter creators alongside influencers led to an overall higher engagement rate:
One influencer, Tessa Netting, drove a 61.3% View Rate
