Campaign Strategy

STRATEGY INTRODUCTION/OVERVIEW

Our goal was to create fans of the film before it came out so we developed a fully integrated three-tiered strategy. Phase one was designed to activate online communities that have a reason to be passionate about this film in order to build a groundswell of support. Phase two was to create intrigue on a mass scale — introduce mysterious elements of the film that drive people to our website to learn more. Phase three to create mass awareness for the film and its launch date.

Our guiding light creatively was that everything we do should reflect the unique, cool, handmade nature of this film. We believed that the more you knew about what went into it, the more you'd get out of it. We also wanted to go beyond brand recognition and ensure that anyone who interacted with any element of our communications came away having had a brand experience, a sense of what it would be like to see the film.

OUR INFLUENCER STRATEGY IN A NUTSHELL

The accompanying image that looks like a cog is something we call our "fanscape." The outside spokes are specific groups of influencers. The inner circle is our mass audience, people ages 12 to 34 who we call "explorers." The objective was to activate people online (the spokes) to create a groundswell of excitement and support for the movie, and then channel that enthusiasm to a mass audience.

THE ASSIGNMENT

There are many online communities who are (or will be) excited about Coraline. Not just excited, but eager to talk about it. Our objective was to give them something to talk about. So we sent boxes that included various "relics" from the film directly to these influencers. The boxes were handcrafted specifically for them and linked an aspect of the movie to their particular passion. They also included a code that gave the influencers private access to an online mini-documentary that was made with them in mind. For example, our animation fans saw a documentary about building the armatures for the film. Ultimately, we hoped to get these folks to share the boxes and the codes, via photos, videos and blog entries, with other members of their community.

WE DELINEATED FIVE SEPARATE INFLUENCER GROUPS

Fans of Selick, Gaiman and anyone involved in the creation of the film ("Creators")
Fans of the craft of filmmaking and especially the type used in this film ("Craft")
Comics, animation and collectibles geeks ("Geeks")
Folks who we knew would be excited about the themes/aesthetics of the film ("Culture")
People in the video game world ("Gamers")