This summer Windowseat created its most successful parody video to date to launch a blockbuster partnership between its client Quiznos and 20th Century Fox for the new release of the popular hit franchise series, The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials and to engage users, spend time with the brand and drive them into stores.
The main goals were:
-Create culturally relevant branded content for Quiznos that would engage their target audience
-Create a time sensitive parody video that would attract young millennial audience
-Get Quiznos audience talking about the brand and start a online conversation
-Engage users on social media with shareable video content
-Drive In Store Visits
Drive traffic to Quiznos website and Toasty.TV
Increase subscribers to Quiznos YouTube channel
Promote downloads of Quiznos digital coupons
Drive Sweepstakes "Enter to Win Hollywood VIP Red Carpet Premiere" and Loyalty Club sign ups
The strategy behind the Burn Trials was not only to help grow brand awareness, but also to get Quiznos into pop-culture conversations through an original and engaging brand story video. The creative result was a series of original parody videos including Burn Trials. The strategy behind these videos was to align Quiznos with trending topics and content relevant to their target audience. The video was released on Toasty.TV and YouTube with a mix of paid, earned, owned media tactics. We leveraged the power of social media to distribute the video to Quiznos fans as well as fans of Maze Runner and popular music festivals that time of year. Our paid tactics included programmatic: 15 second video buys promoting the consumer Sweepstakes and a YouTube TruView video buy to support the Burn Trials parody. PR has also played a key role in our distribution. Industry, trade and top news publications have picked up Quiznos content, as it is culturally relevant and fits into the conversations/topics they are already pushing out to their audiences. Relevancy has caused this content program to quickly become part of the pop-culture conversation through authentic brand stories.
In less than a week of its release, the video hit 1MM views on YouTube; and by the end of September had doubled its views to over 2.6MM. Overall traffic for Quiznos branded content site (Toasty.TV) increased by 35k and subscribers to their YouTube channel rose by 32%. The sweepstakes promotion tied to the video had over 72,000 unique visitors and over 20,000 entries during its run. Social Media engagement on Quiznos social channels rose with over 11,500 engagements on posts related to the promotion alone.
The video fuelled a storm of publicity in over 300 media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, USA Today, and The New York Times. Meanwhile the creative industry took notice as well. The video ranked 4th in Creativity's Top 20 ads, 8th in Adweek's September 10 Most Watched Ads on YouTube; beating out the new iPhone 6s Plus reveal.
20th Century Fox credited the video and partnership with helping the film's opening weekend box office success. Seems our little parody got millennials to the theatre in droves and pushed The Maze Runner: Scorch Trials to the Number 1 spot at the box office ahead of the widely anticipated Johnny Depp film Black Mass; ultimately bringing in $30.3MM in receipts.