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To promote Kodak’s sponsorship of Paramount Pictures’ summer blockbuster, Mission:Impossible-2 and the on-screen use of Kodak digital cameras and memory cards in the movie, kodak.com hosted a live Webcast of the worldwide Hollywood movie premiere and a M:i-2 themed site. Kodak and Weber Shandwick launched an integrated marketing and public relations campaign to coincide with an integrated print and online advertising campaign and Internet sweepstakes, all designed to leverage the M:i-2 sponsorship. The mission: to deliver a cohesive message about the value of digital pictures and demonstrate the company’s commitment and support of the digital picture category while increasing traffic to kodak.com.
CAMPAIGN EXECUTION: THE WEBCAST
Weber Shandwick facilitated a relationship between Kodak and MovieCONNECT.com, a leader in online Hollywood movie content, to produce and promote the exclusive Webcast of the M:i-2 movie premiere. This extravaganza featured interviews with the stars on the red-carpet, movie trailers and exclusive footage from the Paramount after-party. The Webcast began with live footage of the stars as they walked down the red carpet, coupled with a variety of behind-the-scenes exclusive content and digital camera giveaways.
CAMPAIGN EXECUTION: THE SITE
The Kodak M:i-2 site allowed site visitors to have fun with digital pictures while learning more about the Kodak products seen in the movie. Kodak and Weber Shandwick issued a press release and a separate media alert announcing Kodak’s involvement in the motion picture and heavily promoting this interactive, picture-enabled site. Weber Shandwick also produced a b-roll package highlighting each interactive feature of this site. The site gave consumers the opportunity to:
Register to win a Kodak digital camera through an online sweepstakes
Participate in a live trivia contest via email
Follow interviews with the movie’s producer and cinematographer
Send M:i-2-themed postcards and play with movie-themed picture puzzles
Purchase Kodak products
- The site also demonstrated the positive impact that the Internet and Webcasting can have on movie promotions.
JOINT FORCES IN THE NEWS
In addition to our media efforts to drive traffic to the Mi2 site, we identified high-traffic entertainment and media sites that would help us promote the site. Promotional efforts drove record-breaking traffic to kodak.com and provided invaluable insight on the Web-Entertainment industry. Weber Shandwick launched an extensive consumer outreach campaign designed to connect many different audiences, including consumer, entertainment, cinematography and photography, while spanning a variety of media outlets and mediums including print, broadcast, promotional/content partners, and online media.
We generated more than 86 MILLION media impressions for Kodak’s involvement in M:i-2.
National media attention from print and broadcast outlets including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Boston Globe, Daily Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, USA Today, and the CBS Early Show.
Top-tier Internet outlets such as Advertising Age, ZDTV, Third Age.com, and Yahoo! Entertainment alone generating over 30.1 million impressions.
Content partnerships between Kodak and prominent entertainment sites that agreed to promote the Webcast either from their home or movie pages. Kodak's M:i-2 content partners included E! Online, ZDTV.com, Variety.com, Oxygen-GirlsOn.com, and TVGuide.com.
Print Placements: Print articles were written on the Kodak/M:i-2 premiere party Webcast and Kodak’s role in the movie, accounting for 6,686,731 impressions. Outreach efforts to the top 200 daily newspapers, weekly magazines, entertainment and marketing trades proved successful garnering coverage in outlets such as USA Today, Boston Globe, Arizona Republic, Hollywood Reporter, and Daily Variety. These articles not only mentioned Kodak and its involvement with M:i-2, they covered everything from the overall marketing strategy to the offerings of the kodak.com site.
Broadcast Coverage: Weber Shandwick produced a solid Kodak-branded b-roll package that ran in 25 segments nationwide and generated nearly 10 million impressions with television coverage leading up to, during, and after the Webcast. The goal was to provide television news outlets with footage to promote the Webcast and Kodak URL. Weber Shandwick overcame several technical and production challenges to meet this goal and ultimately provided a great visual for television viewers across the country. A strategic and first-of-its kind approach was taken to ensure the Kodak brand was part of the premier party footage that was sent to the stations. Weber Shandwick filmed the Webcast feed from a computer so the Kodak Web site was seen on the video, thus displaying Kodak's affiliation with the Webcast and movie. The stations then showed the red carpet interviews and other footage with the Kodak logo. Leveraging the star-power of Tom Cruise and the hype around the new M:i-2 movie worked to our advantage. Not only was this a perfect opportunity for us to inject a kodak.com mention in the movie hype, the Webcast was a new kind of event for media outlets who traditionally cover Hollywood premiere’s.
Promotional/Content Partners: Weber Shandwick pursued top-tier promotional/content partners to promote Kodak’s M:i-2 site and Webcast. The unusual aspect of this effort was that partners of this caliber normally charge large amounts of money to advertise on their site, yet Weber Shandwick was able to secure five top-tier Internet sites, all of whom agreed to promote the M-i:2 Webcast for free. ZDTV, Variety Magazine Online, Oxygen-GirlsOn, E! Online, and TV Guide Online all agreed to be Kodak’s “promotional partners.” The majority of these partners ran the official kodak.com/MovieConnect/M:i-2 banner on their sites from May 15th through May 19th, driving significant traffic to kodak.com and generating interest in the Webcast. One of these partners, ZDTV, aired a live broadcast segment on their “Internet Tonight” program. These free promotional results were a huge success!
Online Coverage: The online outreach effort successfully generated links and online media coverage, with links to kodak.com resulting in 47,847,825 impressions, and total measurable impressions from online media totaling 21,621,560. Specific results included a USA Today Hot Site award as well as links from the Yahoo! What's New and Yahoo! Entertainment sites. Coinciding with the public release of M:i-2 on May 25th, kodak.com set new traffic records for page requests and site visitors. Since the premiere party Webcast, Paramount's official M:i-2 Web site has referred more traffic to kodak.com than any other site reported in the top 100 external referrers to kodak.com.
MISSION ACCOMPLISHED
Despite tight time constraints, a mammoth approval process, a limited budget and limited resources - Weber Shandwick and Kodak completed its mission and produced stellar results. Not only was this the first streaming media event that Weber Shandwick and Kodak jointly presented, but this was one of the first times that a traditional movie premiere blended with the online world. The promotional efforts of Weber Shandwick and Kodak became the driving force behind the biggest online Hollywood movie premiere; with Kodak being the only company to carry this event live and online. Weber Shandwick’s and Kodak’s overall involvement in M:i-2 truly is a mission accomplished from a brand standpoint. The Webcast was a mission accomplished superbly in that it drove consumers, who had never before visited kodak.com or even “touched” a digital picture before, online to experience the wonders of the online world.
The M:i-2 experience has proven that providing Web content to coincide with timely consumer events, like a movie premiere, is a powerful way to drive record numbers of visitors to the Internet.
