The Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) is a foreign language art house film festival. In a world of Netflix, iPads and superhero Hollywood blockbusters, our task was to raise awareness and attract audiences to films they’ve never heard of, starring actors they don’t know, in languages they don’t understand.
To create a new kind of movie trailer - The Emotional Trailer - we created a way to collect emotional data, that in-turn created a new emotional script for each film in the festival. With the emotional data script, we were able to physically display the way a movie would make people feel if they went to see it, and condense the entire move experience into less than a minute through our Emotional Simulator.
The Emotional Trailer is the perfect idea and channel amalgam, in that both the media and idea were co-dependent. Small format outdoor and PR promoted the Emotional Simulator activation. This activation then created content (Emotional Trailers) that digital media and social sharing then pushed to generate interest in
films that are otherwise, very hard to sell. In doing so, we achieved record sales. It is not merely the one idea executed in a number of channels - each element of this campaign, relied on the other.
STRATEGY
The truth is, great films move people – they make people think and feel often for days after the event. The most compelling truth comes from a much simpler insight: We all feel the same basic emotions. And the consumer insight is simple: No matter where you are from you don’t just see a film, you feel it. Fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness and happiness.
So when you’re trying to sell numerous films in several languages without any familiar cast or crew we had to show people what they would feel throughout and as an outcome of a film. With that in mind, our strategy was simple. We wanted to leverage from the universal language of emotion. The language of emotion was to
be used to transcend language barriers and show a compelling but universal way to communicate the essence of each film at MIFF.
IDEA
We all feel the same basic emotions: fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness and happiness. And no matter where you are from you don’t just see a film, you feel it. So using the human face as a display, emotional data collected from film critics and an innovative use of technology, we created movie trailers that spoke every
language. The Emotional Trailer.
EXECUTION
To do this we first held special preview screenings with prominent movie critics to capture the 6 key human emotions of fear, anger, surprise, disgust, sadness and happiness for every film at the festival via our custom mobile app and biometric sensors. This data created an Emotional Script condensing an entire 2 hour film
into under one minute.
The data was then fed via electric stimulation into the facial muscles of willing participants to act out the emotional arc of an entire film, using the human face as a display. Before each film at the festival, audiences also experienced the Emotional Scripts in a custom-built movie chair we called the Emotional Simulator. The simulator sessions sold out within two days. All these experiences were filmed, and created Emotional Trailers for every film at the festival. Trailers that the audience in the cinema, watching the live stream, or seeing on social media, could book tickets directly from.
RESULTS
The highest ever sales results in MIFF’s history. The Emotional Trailers drove an 800% increase in social shares. Tickets to preview films sold out within two days. The excitement around the Emotional Simulator and Emotional Trailers drove the
following festival records.
800% Increase in social shares for the festival
Biggest ticket sales in MIFF’s 65 year history
$30,165,012 in earned media
Number 1 attraction at the festival
14 million people reached
40% Increase in mobile traffic to website