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, WarnerMedia announced that they would be financing the completion of the Snyder Cut, now titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and launching 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 Sndyer’s vision for his film and the passionate fanbase who had been hoping to see it for years.
The community was key to the success of Zack Snyder’s Justice League. By engaging with them in authentic and meaningful ways we were able to activate the fans to help share Zack’s message.
Especially key in the early days of this campaign, we engaged with fans one-on-one on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to significantly boost conversation. With our primary audience on Twitter, we focused on regularly engaging with fans on this platform, optimizing the Snyder Cut’s presence with GIFs and other shareable content. For trailer debuts, we responded with GIFs of talked-about moments and developed a consistent tone and extremely knowledgeable voice across all of our posts. During the Digital Red Carpet Premiere, we hand-selected fan tweets to showcase on the live simulcast, focusing on a diversity of voices that represented the global community.
Our Facebook and Instagram accounts targeted more mainstream audiences, so we developed Instagram Story streams that encouraged interactivity and UGC. We also launched a Vero page to own exclusive content windows, servicing the hardcore Zack Snyder fan base and their active Snyder Cut community on the platform.
Every day, we actively listened across groups in Reddit, Discord and Twitter and followed influential voices to gauge sentiment and summarize daily chatter, especially when it impacted our upcoming content and key beats.
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.
Exceeding even our highest goals, our campaign worked with the passionate fan community to make Zack Snyder’s Justice League the #1 Most-Discussed movie on Twitter in 2021.
