Malaysian Media Awards Winners Showcase

The Challenge
In a year of action and adventure films- Malaysians’ most loved movie genres; Warner Bros released TheConjuring, a horror flick. There were approximately 15 movies being released in the same month. The challenge was to raise awareness and target the fans of horror movies that also enjoy other genres.

The Solution – Insight & Idea
Our insights tell us that horror movie fans typically loves the challenge of being frightened, the more frightening a movie trailer is the more excited they are about catching the movie. 67% of them check out movie trailers before deciding on which movies to watch. They also actively search for scary video content online and share this with their friends. In fact, they search for it more than regular cinema lovers do (index 114) and they frequent YouTube 1.2 times more. These findings directed us to strategize our movie marketing approach on YouTube (the #1 Video portal in the country) with 1 key goal in mind – to give these horror movie fans such a fright that they won’t stop talking about the movie!

The Execution
We tied TheConjuring movie trailer to an audience who would search and consume the available 23,800,000 ghost related videos and 2,500,000 paranormal videos on YouTube. We scoured over 400 minutes of ghost and supernatural sighting videos untapped by any advertisers. We then identified the most viewed and shared videos to strategically place our trailers on. Because these content were not highly bid for, we were able to cost efficiently buy more than twice the impression versus an average industry campaign. To tease and excite our audience, the campaign started with the trailer showing moviegoers’ frightened reactions to TheConjuring in US. When social buzz picked up the trailers online, we further created a following on YouTube by seeding 4 more versions. Going further, we planned the sequence of trailers and strategically targeted the videos during ‘ghost’ hours; midnight and early morning. We ran the scariest versions at midnight, to give those exposed to the videos their greatest fright, knowing this would create a social ripple effect and generate buzz and anticipation of the movie release.

The Results
Doubled box office gross numbers (US$ 1.5million in just 2 weeks); 4X higher than another horror movie out that time. High search volumes made it the only movie to get into Google Malaysia’s 2013 Top 10 Search Keywords. Our unique targeting methods were able to achieve a cost per view of only $0.06 (60% lower than industry) and gain 89% impression share. TheConjuring search volumes increased by 2,550% on YouTube and 4,350% on Google.