For the long-awaited release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (aka the Snyder Cut), Home Brew envisioned a social campaign unmatched in scope and size to delight the fans that had waited years for this film to premiere. With a very actively engaged audience spanning across the globe, we wanted our campaign to lead the conversation while remaining nimble enough to adapt to real-time trends so that the campaign stayed culturally relevant at all times. In close partnership with HBO Max, we set out to create a holistic digital marketing strategy, best-in-class creative, strategic content rollout plan, and an approach to community management that would authentically capture Zack Snyder’s vision for the film, successfully engage and excite the passionate fan base, and ultimately drive awareness for the film’s debut on the HBO Max streaming platform.
Before it was ever announced for HBO Max, the Snyder Cut had developed a dedicated following. During the making of 2017’s Justice League, Zack Snyder was forced to leave the project due to a family tragedy and was unable to finish the original vision he had for the film. As years went on, rumors circulated that he had a rough final cut of the film and fans began demanding the chance to watch it. In 2020, Warner Bros. announced that they would finance the completion of the Snyder Cut, now titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and launch it in 2021 on HBO Max.
With the pressure of a legendary director’s cut mixed with high expectations from the fans, we knew the primary task was to get it right. Everything we did in this campaign was in service of Zack Snyder’s vision for his film and the passionate fanbase who had been hoping to see it for years.
Instagram was important to reach the broadest audience. To do that we focused on two primary strategies: keep the timeline premium and celebrate the community through Instagram Stories.
Our Instagram timeline remained heavily character-driven and we gave equal attention to characters like Batman, The Flash, and Cyborg while introducing exclusive clips for each of the characters and scenes from the upcoming film. We utilized Carousels to show unique looks at each of the characters and keep our content in the front of the timeline.
On Instagram Stories, we shared cosplay and fan art from the community drawing attention and praise as an account that celebrated the community. We also leveraged the expiration times of Stories to hide a hidden clue for a scavenger hunt. Mimicking a plot point from the film, the scavenger hunt was designed to challenge fans to find 3 videos, uniting all 3 in order to reveal an exclusive clip for the upcoming film.
Home Brew executed a winning campaign that delighted fans and drew in new viewers for a record-breaking release that earned 34.7B social impressions. As a result of our campaign, the film had over 20,000 social posts from global audiences every day for over 60 days. The accounts experienced 3,514% follower growth and gained 734,851 new fans. As a result of our owned channel amplification, 82% of views on the first trailer within one week were driven organically.
