When the classic book series Goosebumps came to life in theaters, Sony pictures and their agency Universal McCann wanted to create a unique campaign that harnessed the films' amazing visuals in a social way.
Looking to drive awareness for the upcoming release of the Goosebumps in theaters, the teams sought to connect with a general audience on Instagram interested in entertainment and horror, ultimately looking to turn awareness into ticket purchase intent.
In a first to market campaign the integration must involve of 2 key pillars of the strategy, influencers and virtual reality.
First, theAmplify developed a strategy with Sony and Universal McCann to create content on Instagram that would transport the influencers into a scene from the movie with the help of a virtual reality headset. To bring this life, many things needed to be achieved.
theAmplify's custom targeting technology, SharedRank, identified the most effective influencers by comparing audience behavior against demographics and psychographics of the films current audience tracking behavior.
The algorithm selected 5 core influencers.
Keegan Allen: https://www.instagram.com/keeoone/
JoJo Siwa: https://www.instagram.com/itsjojosiwa/
Jordan Doww: https://www.instagram.com/jordandoww/
Hayden Summerall: https://www.instagram.com/haydensummerall/
Aidan Alexander: https://www.instagram.com/aidanalexander/
Those algorithmically selected Influencers were then invited to theAmplify's green screen studio to capture content. They came in and put on the Virtual Reality headset, instantly finding themselves in a car with Jack Black as he frantically was trying to outrun a giant monster. At the same time, they sat in a special chair that mimicked the motions in the car.
This set the stage for the experience to be captured within the green screen studio. With theAmplify's proprietary VR motion tracking production capabilities, cameras captured the reactions in front of a green screen, and the team superimposed them with realistic graphics - making it look as if the influencers were actually inside the car with Jack Black.
After capturing the content, theAmplify's editing team cut down each video to a 15 second experience for the targeted audiences of the influencers to experience on Instagram. Each video opened in a seemingly normal environment as the influencer began to place the VR headset on their face. Once the headset was applied, the influencer and audience were transported into the Goosebumps world. Each influencer was then in a speeding car with R.L. Stine (played by Jack Black). They experienced first hand what it is like to live in one of his famous books, "A Shocker on Shock Street," seen in the trailer.
See the full work here --> https://vimeo.com/148321410 (pw: theamplify)
Once influencers posted their wild rides to social media, the campaign really took off, with metrics that out paced all industry benchmarks.
Across the 5 branded videos we saw the following metrics in only 24 hours:
4,022,844 Organic Impressions
1,465,075 Organic Full Video Views
36.42% View Through Rate - against a 30% entertainment industry benchmark
163,705 Organic Likes & Comments
4.07% Engagement Rate – against a 3% entertainment industry benchmark
Then moving into proprietary metrics that theAmplify is able to pull, we started to measure the impact of the overall conversation.
The sentiment score of the overall conversation was 95% Positive/ Neutral.
18% of all comments were branded and related to people going to see the film, against the entertainment benchmark of 9-13%
The content was also extremely shareable, with users tagging their friends in almost 60% of comments, who may not of been part of the original influencer audiences.
We saw that over 2,564 total emoji's used, top used emoji being Laughing Crying.
Based on the words most used with the top emojis, response to influencers' posts was very positive: audiences were eager to try out the VR experience and showed intent to see the Goosebumps Movie. The clustering of positive emojis indicates the younger audience uses emojis at a higher frequency and responded extremely well to the content, often pairing hearts and smiles to share their excitement for the movie release.
The final and most compelling take away is how the movie performed in theaters; Goosebumps opened #1 at the box office during its opening weekend
