Making the user a Marketeer
Working with digital agency Brandmovers, CinemaNX developed an application to be housed in Facebook, with communication tools that would allow it to be shared on Twitter and other social networking sites. Fans were able to sign up on Facebook, despite the activity being over, the users were still able to interact with it.
CinemaNX created a dynamic incentive for user activity through a suite of tools, which participants could use to generate support for their cinema, and earn themselves activity points. These tools, intended to facilitate a viral effect, were a combination of Facebook standard communicators, and on-brand messages relating to movie items or activities.
Facebook:
Users selected Facebook friends and sent invitations to install the application. These were represented as calls to action to support the user’s selected local cinema, but also allowed an option for recipients to select or nominate their own cinema. Each invited friend that installed the application and supported the original user’s cinema earned the user 100 activity points. Each referred installation which supported another cinema earned 20 activity points, and each invitation sent but not completed earned 2 activity points.
Users used the Facebook ‘share’ function to publish a call to action to their newsfeed, which would proclaim their support and encourage their friends to join the campaign. How the campaign was marketed? (Offline)
After initial competition between several cinema groups, a university film society in Southampton – Union Films – fully embraced the prospect of hosting the premiere, advertising to all their members, asking them to vote for their cinema on their university campus via posters, home page exposure on their website and through a newsletter.
It was this interest in the increasing regional presence for the film that gained the film further coverage in regional and Scottish/Irish publications such as Venue, Leeds Guide, The List, Irish Times, Evening Herald – many of which detailed the underground approach of taking the premiere out of London.
CinemaNX worked with Findanyfilm.com to create an MPU (a standard form of mid-page advertising unit measuring 300 × 250 pixels), encouraging users to click through and vote for their local cinema.
Offline Press: Local and national coverage included ITN, The Observer, The Sun, Daily Mail, Metro, Life, Cineuropa, Female First, This Is Hampshire, Daily Echo.
Alice Creed was one of the most covered premieres that week due to the uniqueness of the location and the approach credible the premiere was.
Union Films fully embraced the prospect of hosting the event: organising all ticket redemption and, with CinemaNX, coordinating all marketing materials including the creation of banners, hiring of a red carpet and associated security staff, laying on a champagne reception and hiring a photographer.
