| Date | |
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| Author | DCM |
| Categories | cinema |
This article was written by DCM Commercial Director Joe Evea and was supplied courtesy of The Wall Blog.
Channel 4 viewers who sat down to watch the network première of The Hunger Games recently were rewarded with exclusive footage from the upcoming Dawn of the Planet of the Apes movie. The three-minute trailer took over the whole of the first ad break before viewers were asked to take to Twitter to vote on what they’d like to see next…
The next instalment of this successful movie franchise sees the apes start taking over the world and the choice between #Humanstory or #Apestory on Twitter also saw the Apes win the votes to secure a further minute-long exclusive clip of Caesar and his companions.
It’s fantastic to see such innovative film promotion across media channels, driving people to the cinema to see what promises to be one of the big summer movies, after the first reboot took more than £20m at the UK box office.
In cinemas, this type of live interaction is even more powerful due to the heightened emotion and shared experience within the unique auditorium environment. In 2012, we pioneered the world’s first ever sound-activated cinema advertising spot in collaboration with Unilever as part of an experiential marketing campaign to launch the latest addition to the Lynx Shower Gel range.
Cinema audiences were handed the power to control what they saw on the big screen before The Dark Knight Rises by voting with their voices for the outcome of the ad for Lynx Sportblast shower gel and shampoo.
Targeting a young, active male audience and harnessing the Lynx effect to get guys ahead in the mating game, the creative from BBH featured five very different, yet challenging “Lynx Mynxes” – Brainy Girl, Flirty Girl, Party Girl, High Maintenance Girl and Sporty Girl.
The Batman fans were next invited to choose whichever Lynx Girl they found the ‘most demanding’ and cheer for their favourite. The girl receiving the loudest response was then revealed to the audience as her ad was played in full.
DCM worked with Mindshare and digital agency MarketMe to devise this ground-breaking activity which used technology that listened to the audience reaction. Within each auditorium an audio trigger was linked to a server, which gauged the level of interaction and fed the results back to the screen in real time. The result was a new way of engaging the audience using cutting-edge technology.
Since then, we’ve been working to scale up interactive technologies and link engaging content on the big screen to the ubiquitous smartphone device. While many believe that cinema is one of the last remaining mediums where technology does not impose itself on the experience, we have to be mindful that the majority of cinemagoers are increasingly ‘mobile’, using their phones to book tickets, to text in the foyer and pre-film, then share their thoughts after the movie.
The cinema industry could choose to ignore such behaviour, or attempt to ban it. However, taking the pragmatic view, it makes more sense to embrace it and gain an element of control over it, to provide a solution that improves the cinemagoing experience for the audience and, where relevant, for brands. Cinime, our interactive mobile app, created with Yummi Media Group, enables us to engage cinemagoers with a second screen experience that begins to offer brands the opportunity to engage the audience before, during and after the visit.
BMW recently ran a three week interactive screen time campaign promoting the new BMW 2 Series Coupé. Cinemagoers used Cinime to pick the perfect driving line, acceleration and braking point into a corner. The fastest to select the correct answers and register for the competition were invited to participate in a track day racing BMWs.
It may still be the dawn of the age of interaction in the cinema environment, but results so far suggest that there is a great opportunity to offer a more exciting and engaging environment for audiences and brands alike.
This article was originally published by The Wall. To view the article, click here.