July 24, 2015

Sony Pictures

The Challenge

As Sony’s sole digital agency, our brief is always to develop impactful and interactive online creative that showcases the key art and trailer of each film to best effect. Our challenge is to deliver ‘bums on seats’ by maximising film awareness online and increasing buzz around each film.

The Strategy: Innovative rich media advertising

We work closely with both Sony’s media planners and online ad servers to develop innovative and effective creative using a variety of rich media formats.

We have a test programme in place, testing different formats to achieve the optimum mix of video view to impact. And given the content we have to work with, innovation is always top of the agenda. Which is why our click through rates are consistently higher than entertainment industry standards.

Feeding social media

Our insights into what fans are saying about a film 6 months prior to release regularly steer the creative direction of the film campaign. Using our in-house tools we gauge sentiment, and what’s more, identify key forums and communities for early content seeding.

Different films require different tactics, but activity ranges from creating shareable applications and blogger outreach, to nationwide campaigns such as our search for the UK Karate Kid – an online campaign that delivered reach of over one million fans.

Sony eCRM

Through a variety of channels – Twitter, Facebook, email, YouTube, Flickr – we are building communities of film fans segmented by specific genres. Depending upon their previous film interest, and/or interest in a particular star or franchise, we target messages to film communities using the most appropriate channel.

Trade initiatives

But we don’t just look after Sony’s consumer campaigns. With the help of our BAFTA campaigns or SP Insight – our cinema trade extranet – we also utilise digital channels to enhance trade and industry relationships.