Universal Pictures • Film ad campaigns for Get on Up, 47 Ronin, Non-Stop,
Campaign Overview
For the Universal Pictures account, I was the Lead Digital Media Strategist responsible for creating and executing digital advertising campaigns for four Universal Picture films: Get On Up, A Walk Among the Tombstones, 47 Ronin, Non-Stop.
While the films had its own unique set of marketing challenges & messaging, I approached each ad campaign with the same sense of urgency and care regardless of its projected level of success. From a heart-wrenching James Brown biopic to an action-packed sci-fi saga featuring Keanu Reeves, our goal was to increase brand awareness for the films and fill up seats in the movie theaters.
The Challenge
As alluded to before, each film presented its own unique set of marketing challenges.
However, the digital advertising objectives that remained constant through all films were:
Increase brand awareness for the movie release (i.e. brand recall & lift, high CTR)
Achieve all media KPI’s — either meeting previous campaign benchmarks or surpassing them
Increase conversion volume as much as possible (i.e. sell movie tickets)
The Solution
While all of the film ad campaigns had a similar baseline in regards to incorporating specific digital channels (i.e. paid social, display advertising, video advertising, etc.), there were many differentiating layers to the strategy for each movie.
Film-Specific Media Strategies:
Get on Up — As a central progenitor of funk music and the “Godfather of Soul”, it was imperative for the advertising to reach not only fans of James Brown, but also expand to movie-goers who had an affinity towards music (especially R&B, soul, blues, etc.). As such, our ad campaign delivered on this by prioritizing custom partnerships with top-players in the online music space, such as Spotify and Pandora.
47 Ronin — In addressing the challenge of the film’s star (Keanu Reeves) not yet reestablishing his stardom after The Matrix Revolutions (which was released ten years prior), the ad campaign had to focus more on the unique storytelling and CGI. Leveraging 3rd-party data was critical in reaching existing fans of the talent, but also expanding our reach to the broader fantasy action genre
Non-Stop — Upon the release of this film, Liam Neeson had already risen to stardom and cemented himself as a prominent action star across a multitude of action-thriller series. Therefore, (thankfully) the ad strategy was pretty straightforward for this film. Beyond the high-impact takeovers and mass-reaching social/display/video ads, we capitalized on the sizable fanbase of pre-existing Liam Neeson fans and action-thriller genre enthusiasts.
The Results
Aside from achieving media KPI’s and metrics (i.e. brand awareness, CTR, conversion rates, etc.), some films were more successful than others when it comes to the bottom-line ticket sales. Despite the lackluster response for 47 Ronin, Get On Up managed to stay in the green with a slight profit.
Above all, Non-Stop hits it out of the park with exceptional performance in ticket sales.
Take a look below on reported ticket-sales worldwide as compared to the budget required to produce the film:
Get on Up — $33.4MM Worldwide Gross Sales ($30MM Budget)
47 Ronin — $152MM Worldwide Gross Sales ($175MM Budget)
Non-Stop — $222.8MM Worldwide Gross Sales ($50MM Budget)
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