Life’s Journeys

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Insight

Twentieth Century Fox, in tandem with its media agency Vizeum and creative partner Soap, challenged Yahoo! to deliver a holistic creative advertising solution for the launch of ‘Life of Pi’. Director, Ang Lee had accomplished the difficult task of transforming Yann Martel’s novel to the silver screen. The film was a cinematic masterpiece with stunning visual effects. But the film was a tough sell. It was almost considered unmarketable. It was after all, a film about a boy lost at sea. In a lifeboat. With a tiger - a 450 pound Royal Bengal tiger.

The eyes of Hollywood were watching and Fox had gambled an estimated $120m to produce the film. With a cast of unknowns and a storyline that didn’t follow traditional box office hits such as those based on comic books, video games or other film franchises the film was a tricky pitch to audiences. Yahoo!’s objectives were challenging: build awareness of the film and depict the wonder and spectacle of the ‘Life of Pi’ using technology based media on a global scale and, of course, drive ticket sales. Without an all-star cast in the spotlight, Yahoo!’s strategy for the launch of ‘Life of Pi’ was to defy conventional movie marketing and focus on the movie’s key themes to draw interest in the film. ‘Life of Pi’ was not merely a story about a boy, a boat and a tiger but a spiritual tale of hope and discovery.

Strategy

Yahoo! proposed an innovative strategy that would become a media first both in cinema and digital marketing. It agreed with Fox and Vizeum to go beyond the film’s obvious talking points and attempt to bring to life the spiritual themes of the film into personal relevance.

The media owner proposed embarking on an immense editorial project - to globally crowd-source editorial and photography to promote the film through thematic association. It harnessed the Yahoo! Contributor Network, which offers freelancers, bloggers and writers the opportunity to provide original content pieces for publication on Yahoo! and came up with a unique idea to take user’s individual stories and photographs of personal growth and discovery, and turn these into individual ‘Life of Pi’ promotions. A web of user generated content would spread on Yahoo! across four continents as users from across the world submitted their special transformative stories of love, friendship, hope and growth. By millions of people experiencing these same stories, a deeper and more personal connection with the film’s concept was created.

Traditionally a film is promoted through video views; or special stunts to create standout. This ‘personal emotional journey’ approach had never been done before. Due to the highly visual nature of the film, Yahoo!, Fox and its agency partners wanted to bring user’s photographs into the ‘Life of Pi’ ecosystem. Together they created a beautiful ‘Message in a Bottle’ app enabling users to upload photos which represented their own stories of growth. These images from around the world allowed users to share inspirational messages with each other visually.

Execution

Fox, Vizeum and Yahoo! took film marketing into new territory. They challenged the way movies are traditionally brought to market, going beyond the championing of a movie’s stars/director and instead focused on establishing emotional connections with users through genuinely moving content. The connections formed with the themes of ‘Life of Pi’ were so strong that the Yahoo! Contributor Network generated an incredible number of life stories, of which Yahoo! chose 160 to share in ‘Life’s Journeys’.

The campaign was highly socialised - the most compelling stories were shared socially on Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo!’s own Social Bar platform integrated with Facebook*. Each piece of content had its own unique storyline and included titles such as ‘The Art of Letting Go’, ‘Why I gave my job as an investment banker up to move to Indonesia’ and ‘How a book inspired me to find happiness’. Some stories were so popular that they were translated and shared across Yahoo!’s global network - articles such as the unique piece, ‘The first African-American albino supermodel’, which challenged the world’s perception of beauty.

These stories lived in a dedicated section on Yahoo! Lifestyle and were promoted on the Yahoo! Homepage which provided even greater reach. To grow further awareness of the film, ‘Life of Pi’ was promoted using a range of behavioural targeting suites across Yahoo! properties. *Social Bar posts stories you’ve read on Yahoo! to your Facebook profile.

Results

The results were staggering and exceeded all expectations.

- 103,867,477 users engaged with the campaign
- 244,684 uploaded photos
- Content was shared on to Twitter and Facebook over 90,000 times
- Over one billion ad impressions served.
- The editorial value was a massive $1,900,000 with an investment of just under $1,000,000.
- Intent to see the film rose massively when looking at pre and post-campaign analysis**: +43% in the UK, +128% in Germany, +381% in Italy
- Film awareness skyrocketed: +70% in UK, +213% in Germany, +743% in Italy
- Users actively searched for more information on the film after the campaign: 30% UK, 39% Germany, 51% Italy

The final result? The film about a boy on a boat with a tiger would go on to gross a phenomenal $608,901,486 (USD). ‘Life of Pi’ would be nominated for 11 Oscars and win 4 – more than any other film at the 2013 Oscars. The end. **Yahoo! researched three markets: UK, Germany and Italy.

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Brand:
Life of Pi
Brand Owner:
Twentieth Century Fox
Category:
Entertainment
Region:
Australia
France
Germany
Italy
Mexico
Singapore
Spain
United Kingdom
date:
2013
Agencies:
Vizeum (1)
Soap
Media Owner:
Yahoo!
Media Channel:
Cinema,Digital,Online
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