Brief: 20th Century Fox International approached Beatwax to create a unique, standout global campaign for the next release in the hugely successful ‘The Chronicles of Narnia’ franchise – ‘The Voyage of the Dawn Treader’
Overview: Our response: Create a working and sea worthy replica of the Dawn Treader and take to the high seas with a totally amateur crew of mums, dads and their children! http://www.vimeo.com/19165597
Response:
The objective was to create two huge swathes of publicity:
The first being well in advance of the film’s release – the box office success of the first film in the franchise had been huge, a genuine global success, the second had mixed results and under performed generally. Fox wanted to restore the magic of Narnia for the third film and begin to create excitement and anticipation at media, as the preceding film had also been panned critically, we all realised we would need some time to rebuild the magic, hence a long campaign. What better way to restore that Narnian magic, than bring the film’s central asset, The Dawn Treader, to life in the real world!
We reached out to the biggest broadcasters in 12 major markets and tied in partnerships that would deliver huge publicity drives across multiple platforms in broadcast, print and online, to find international family groups to make up our crew. We had to ensure our partners understood the concept; we did not want competition type mechanics buried in the back of their web pages for instance, they needed to spend at media or deliver free media collateral to find our crew e.g. make trailers to drive interest and sign up; create on air features and insert them into prime time viewing schedules; leverage all of their digital databases.
The second part of our deal with them, gave us the second swathe of our publicity campaign: Once we had our families selected, we would bring them to the UK for training in sailing what was essentially a 3 mast, replica 15th century sailing galleon. They would then be sent off on a voyage in the Atlantic lasting two weeks on a genuine Narnian quest! This obviously would make for a great TV show, which is exactly what it became:
Each partner sent a broadcast crew with their family group. They made fly on the wall documentary type pieces for peak time broadcast back in their respective home markets, actually in the release weekend of the film in each territory. Genius!
Results: £22 million (55 times the cost of project) of free media value delivered in 12 markets: This included the USA, UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy and Scandinavia.
The partners included Nickelodeon (USA), Gulli TV (France), Sky One (Germany), National Geographic (Italy), Channel 5 (UK)
Coverage outside of the partners included an extended BBC 1 News piece in the UK, mainstream news on ABC news and Fox News (obviously) in the USA
The Narnian franchise has a very dedicated and passionate global fan base – these groups were catered for by the inclusion on the voyage of Narniafans.com. The leading blog site in Narnia terms – daily filmed exploits of the editors’ adventures were uploaded to the blog and were watched, liked and tagged by Narnian fans worldwide. Their support was very positive (and crucial) considering the second film had disappointed them tool
Awareness was measured in 6 of the markets by Vizeum (Fox media agency) following the first phase of the campaign. The film had been tracking low outside of Narnia fan groups. Post this activity; awareness had been raised by 42% with over 90% intention to see. (Ian Morton, VP Fox marketing Europe).
The campaign with the Dawn Treader followed through into the international release campaign for the DVD of the film in late April 2011. For this, we bought the vessel up the Thames and into St Katherine’s Dock for the international press call. Journalists from as far afield as the USA, Japan and Australia were present.
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