Wieden+Kennedy’s Coraline campaign is a textbook example of how to build buzz around a product using many different types of outreach.
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 [the Coraline] website to learn more. Phase three was to create mass awareness for the film and it’s launch date.
In addition, W+K identified a guiding creative light for the campaign that “everything [they] do should reflect the unique, cool, handmade nature of this film. [They] believed that the more you knew about what went into it, the more you’d get out of it.” Though there are many aspects of the campaign that could be highlighted as examples of how to best do an outreach campaign, I’m going to focus specifically on their blogger outreach for this post.
Blogger Outreach falls under Part 1 of their strategy: Activate Influencers, and W+K knew that there were a lot of online communities that would be (or could be inspired to be) excited and eager to talk about Coraline. To narrow their focus, they began by identifying five separate influencer groups specifically, including Creators (Fans of Selick, Gaiman and anyone involved in the creation of the film.) Craft (Fans of the craft of filmmaking and especially the type used in this film.) Geeks (Comics, animation and collectibles geeks.) Culture (Folks who we knew would be excited about the themes/aesthetics of the film.) and Gamers (People in the video game world.)
Since those communities were already eager to talk about Coraline, W+K just needed to give them something to talk about, so they created 50 handcrafted boxes of movie ‘relics’ taken directly from the film. Each box was designed to link a specific part of the movie to a specific influencer’s passion, and each included a code that gave the influencer private access to an online mini-documentary that was made with them in mind.
Rather than hype up the boxes and their contents though, W+K instead chose to keep things rather secretive, and let the boxes do the talking. On first contact, they simply asked the blogger if they wanted a “free gift” and requested their address. Once the boxes started to arrive however, bloggers quickly jumped at the chance to show off their free gifts, and posted details about each box on their site for the world to see. After a few boxes started to appear, it became a game to see who would get a box next and what it would contain, and a few sites even chronicled the arrival of each box, who had received it, and what the contents were. Had the boxes been equally unique but identical, this ‘game’ would not have occurred, but because each was so unique and so special, the Coraline fan base quickly grew, and then branched out from their first box encounter to other blogs in hopes of learning more about the film and its creative marketing.
In addition to the boxes, W+K also used a variety of cutting edge tactics to promote the film, including street art that used garbage bags and subway wind to create inflatable characters that haunted the midnight streets of New York City, interactive storefronts that used augmented reality technology to place buttons over the eyes of passer-bys, customized Coraline Dunks that had the sneaker world buzzing, and more.
In all, it was a fantastic campaign for a fantastic film that kept the brand experience strong through out and resulted in a successful release of a film that could have been cast off as just another kid’s movie.
The Good:
- Unique and customized boxes prompted almost everyone who received one to post the full details online and across numerous channels.
- Very specific targets received different box contents in order to match their areas of interest.
- Influencers were given exclusive access to additional content and encouraged to share that content with others.
The Bad:
- I’m jealous I didn’t get one.
The Future:
- Highly customized outreach matches influencers with their area of interest, and gives them valuable content that they are compelled to share.
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Mon, Feb 9, 2009
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