For the How It Ends movie campaign we wanted to have fun with all our creative content, but also wanted to do so in a way that felt new and exciting. One of the themes of the film is connecting and reconnecting with people you really matter, without any regrets, which led us to the idea of an SMS campaign. We wanted to create this buzz and community around the film, so while an SMS campaign has been done before, it has never been tied to the trailer of a film! Working in tandem with Community, we attached the first ever phone number for texting attached to the trailer for How It Ends, kicking off the film campaign and Community campaign with an instant way to connect with our key audiences.
Once the trailer launched, we quickly saw our Community begin to grow so our content rollout began. This platform was our direct pathway to connecting with those interested in the film and sharing special easter eggs with them. We created custom pieces of content with our star, Zoe Lister-Jones that could only be unlocked through the Community number, we posed questions in order to really engage with our community like what’s the song you’d want to listen to on your last day on Earth? It’s the last day on Earth, who do you go visit first? We sent release day reminders and even created a custom How It Ends playlist for our Community to enjoy.
The Community platform created a direct to audience light touch with a personal element to connect with fans and movie lovers alike. We found that through this platform, we were able to form deeper connections with the audience and that once a new user joined the community then we knew we could count on them to watch the film - they had bought in! By the end of the campaign, our Community phone number had reached over 4M impressions and we had an 87% SMS open rate.
