I was talking with a friend recently, and she was telling me about a campaign she just finished at Wieden+Kennedy, a creatively-led advertising agency in Portland. The campaign was for the new feature film “Coraline” which is based on the horror novella by author Neil Gaiman. The film, produced by LAIKA Studios, is the first stop-motion animation filmed in 3D. The story is about a young girl, Coraline, who finds a secret door in her new home and when she unlocks it, finds a world that is parallel to her own, but a more thrilling, fantasy world – unlike her current dull world.
So, I went to check out their campaign work. I was expecting some movie posters, trailers, a website, but what I found was so unbelievable, that I was honestly looking through their work for hours. The Coraline campaign is the broadest, most ingenious, and detailed campaign that I’ve ever seen for a movie or any product for that matter. The brilliant creatives at WK utilized every media outlet and used every fresh idea they had to market this movie.
There were basically three parts to their campaign strategy:
Part One was to activate influencers. These influencers were a number of online communities that they knew would be excited about Coraline, and therefore, would want to inform their followers. So, WK sent 50 handcrafted boxes to these influential bloggers that held unique, handmade pieces used in the making of the movie that related to each blogger’s community. For instance, Fashion Piranha, a fashion blog, received a box with fabric swatches from the movie inside. The boxes also came with a skeleton key to open the box, a personalized note, and a secret code to access the Coraline website. Who doesn’t love this kind of personalization? It worked. These bloggers shared the box they received along with the code for the website with their community. The intrigue of Coraline was instantly spread! These blogs helped with much of the online marketing for the movie. They not only helped WK with Part One of the campaign, but subsequently helped with Part Two and Part Three. By having this content already established on the web, it helped with Coraline search queries done by this new audience. You can view most of the “Influencer” boxes on NOTCOT.org.
Influencer Boxes
Part Two helped to create mass intrigue. Throughout this phase, the marketing team placed mysterious objects out in the real world to build a curiosity among the public about Coraline. First, there was the keyhole website, which the blogging community, or anyone now searching online, could find the code to and use to view a short film about the movie that is relevant to their community’s theme. Next, they placed “Wild Postings” which were beautifully designed posters that emulated an intrigue about the movie without blatant advertising. However, the interactive storefronts they created were the most compelling, which included everything from a “Meet the Cast” style interview to an interactive button-eye portrait of yourself and holograms. The most “out there” item created to build mass fascination were pairs of special-made Nike’s called “Coraline Dunks” which you could win in your size. Wait – there’s more.
Keyhole Website
Wild Postings
Storefronts
Nike Dunks
Part Three was the final and “expected” step in the marketing of Coraline which was creating broad awareness of the movie. This included a website, which is oh-so juicy and engaging, a trailer, online communities, and loads of ads including online, outdoor, and newspaper. With the Coraline campaign’s combination of Parts 1-3, it almost makes these more common “Part Three” channels of marketing in other campaigns look like high school flyers stapled to a light post.
Website
Billboard
The final point I want to touch on is the aesthetics and quality of design that this campaign has achieved. The campaign itself is so overwhelmingly large, that you’d expect the design to suffer a little. Not in this case. Every facet of each marketing channel and medium fits with the theme of this movie. The style that they created has a curious, vintage flair to it that you can’t help but be captured by. It is an overarching essence that is carried through so flawlessly that you almost believe Coraline, and the world she explores, is actually a part of our reality. And to add even more “realism” the movie is in 3D. I can feel my eyes "buttoning" over already. You can take a look at the campaign in detail on WK’s website here. They explain the campaign in great detail and have all the assets posted for viewing.
The movie opens today and there is a significant amount of money to make back on the BIGGEST campaign ever for the BIGGEST smallest movie ever made. Something tells me Coraline will do just fine.
