Background
Sony Pictures Animation brought The Smurfs in 3D hybrid live action/animation feature to the blue crew’s fans around the world.
With the film hitting theaters, the movie’s promoters wanted to drive excitement and anticipation to ensure the family comedy would stand out among other Autumn releases.
Aim
With the aim of making The Smurfs a talking point among the online community, the campaign set to get audiences excited and build viral buzz about the movie and its new 3D format, driving ticket sales for the release. Its promotion strategy focused on The Smurfs’ primary targets - parents with children aged 5 to 12 as well as teens and young adults aged 12 to 25.
Execution
For the campaign’s online components, the creative team developed an innovative and interactive expandable 3D panel, using the MediaMind rich media platform, which provided a sneak peek at the film trailer along with information about the movie. Mouse tracking capabilities made the entire banner fun and interactive, driving excellent dwell rates.
The 3D rich media ad format enabled Smurfs fans to interact with their favorite characters in a way that is not possible with other offline platforms.
Result
The campaign recorded high dwell, demonstrating that users are interested in connecting with the brand. Most importantly, they were able to have this brand experience within the environment of their choice and did not have to leave the publisher page.
The dwell rate was 8.62 per cent, versus entertainment benchmark for Malaysia of 7.93 per cent. Users spent twice the dwell time, compared to the entertainment benchmark in Malaysia (146.36 seconds versus 72.54 sec).
