With "Tropic Thunder" and "Eagle Eye," Paramount's Amy Powell is changing the game for interactive movie marketing. She sits down with our chief content officer to talk about it.
Paramount SVP of interactive marketing Amy Powell never seems happy unless she's trying something new, which is one of the reasons she won iMedia's Visionary Entertainment Marketer Award back in 2007.
Two recent campaigns in particular stand out: the hysterical "Rain of Madness" fake documentary for "Tropic Thunder" and "Eagle Eye Free Fall" ARG (alternate reality game) for the forthcoming thriller, "Eagle Eye."
In both cases, rather than recycle footage from the features Powell created original content to extend and tease the movies. I sat down with Amy Powell to talk about the campaigns, the opportunities digital media provide movie marketers, and what she wants to do next.
Brad Berens: I played "Eagle Eye Free Fall" and loved it. It is a supremely creepy and scary experience and it sucked me in totally. It also provoked my wife Kathi to wander into my home office and ask, "What are you watching?"
Please share the basics surrounding this campaign -- it's a 10-minute combo-platter of online, video and mobile marketing, but how is the content of the experience related to the movie?
Amy Powell: Free Fall is designed to be an intense plunge into the world of "Eagle Eye" and allows players to experience what [the lead character] Jerry Shaw goes through first hand. Players can easily replay and share with their friends, in a cross-media storytelling format. It is a unique 10-minute interactive game that allows you to live inside the movie experience.
Free Fall places the player in Jerry Shaw's shoes and creates the same sense of intensity within the alternate reality game. Essentially, players are contacted by characters from the world of "Eagle Eye" and become a part of the movie.
As soon as you sign up, your cell phone will ring. The woman on the other end uses your computer to hack through security systems, your email to send possibly treasonous instructions and your phone to make sure that if you make one false move, the police will be coming for you.
Berens: Truly, the "Eagle Eye Free Fall" experience is a lesson in integrated campaigns in and of itself. How difficult was it to coordinate all the moving parts on this campaign element? Any recommendations you can give to other marketers looking to develop campaigns on such a scale?
Powell: This campaign was actually really great to pull together because we have a team of filmmakers that understand the interactive space and were eager to extend the experience of the film into an ARG. Also, given the theme of the film, the extension to a digital experience was a natural fit, so we were able to migrate players through multiple screens organically and without having to force the experience -- which is not the case on all films.
The biggest challenge of creating and executing an ARG or any additional content related to a feature film is the concern that our content won't live up to the film itself. There is a lot of pressure to deliver content that not only complements the film, but actually raises the stakes to another level... not to mention that we work under pretty strict budget and time constraints.
Berens: Another thing I noticed was what "Eagle Eye Free Fall" doesn't do. It doesn't make a big play for the user. It doesn't, say, hook up to Fandango or MovieTickets.com; it doesn't even say, "Be there on 9/26... or else." Why not? What are your major marketing goals and challenges for the campaign?
Powell: Working with the filmmakers to create the game, we all decided that one of the most appealing elements of the film was the fact that the basic premise of the movie was so relatable. The entire question of what would happen if technology turned against us, in a world where we are all so reliant upon technology, was a real and tangible idea to play with when creating an ARG. We wanted to turn that notion on its head by actually creating a situation where users would experience exactly what would happen to them if technology used their voices, their actions, their backgrounds against them and create real stakes in the game. We felt strongly that we wanted to keep the experience organic and true to the nature of the film and that players would respond by innately wanting to find out more about the movie and showing up Sept. 26th.
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