Executive Summary: WW84 Social Media Campaign
For the release of WW84 to be a success on Christmas Day, interest must be garnered and secured both before and after the film is released. This is because normal box office numbers are not enough to entice viewers to see the movie, since the COVID-19 crisis has rendered movie theater attendance unreliable. The marketing campaign, therefore, must be thorough and all-encompassing; for this reason, we will be launching campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter to ensure that our target audience — comic book fans, action-film fans, and people interested in a strong female lead character — hears our message about WW84 across various channels.
A social media marketing team will be assembled to handle this crucial campaign, and they will be in constant contact with the production team to coordinate efforts for the movie’s promotion. SMART goals have been set in place to make sure that our campaign remains relevant and effective from start to finish, and we have broken up each area of the SMART goals into what it means for the pre-release, live release, and post-release periods of the campaign.
1) Pre-Release
Our pre-release goals are to increase awareness for the upcoming WW84 film release, to create a noticeable boost in HBO membership sales, and to create a pre-ticket sales boost matching at least 50% rate of past DC film pre-ticket sales from before the COVID-19 crisis. In this way, we are ensuring that are campaign is reaching a broad audience and making them aware of the film’s dual release on Christmas Day. Moreover, we are ensuring that the campaign is competing well on both fronts of release: the streaming release on HBO and the theatrical release. The latter can only be evaluated on a limited scale given COVID restrictions and the effect on consumer appetite for a movie theater experience, so we have set 25% as an adequate rate by which to gauge how successful our promotion campaign was. Our pre-release campaign begins December 1st and runs until release day, December 25th.
2) Live Release
Our live release goals for the period from December 25th to January 3rd are to increase aware for the WW84 status as a released film, to be a trending topic across all platforms on release day and through the end of the year, and to reach a 75% honor rate for pre-sold tickets. The first goal is similar to that of the pre-release and is, in fact, an extension. After creating increased awareness in the weeks leading up to the film, we want to sustain that awareness and make sure that our audience knows that the film is out and ready to be viewed! Not only do we want to create awareness, we want to create excitement; therefore, we will also be setting the specific goal of being a trending topic across Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram under the hashtag ‘#WW84’. This way we can gauge just how excited our audience is about the film’s live release. Finally, we want those consumers who have pre-bought tickets to honor their initial excitement for the film by actually going.
3) Post-Release
The release of WW84 is on Christmas Day, which means it is less than a week before the start of a new year. With the new year comes distraction, and distraction is detrimental to a film’s continued success. Therefore, our goals for the post-release period — January 3rd to January 10th — are to keep ‘#WW84’ as a trending topic across all platforms for the first real week of January, to keep streams on HBO Max at 75% the original streaming rate for the first week of the film’s release, and to make sure that WW84 is the most streamed movie on HBO Max through the first two weeks of January. In our post-release phase, we veer away from analyzing our goals based on movie theater success rates, because with the unknowability of the progression of COVID-19 going into 2021 it’s hard to know whether or not anyone other than those inclined to buy pre-release tickets will go to the theaters in the following weeks. Instead, we will focus our efforts on streaming success, both in terms of how often the film is being streamed in the two weeks following the week of the film’s streaming release, and in terms of how the film is performing in comparison with other HBO Max film offerings. Seeing as we are backing a blockbuster film, we want WW84 to be streamed consistently through the new year and we want WW84 to be the most viewed film on HBO Max at least through mid-January.
4) SMART Analysis
Our goals across all campaign periods reach acceptable SMART goal standards. The goals are specific because our desired accomplishments are stated rather than alluded to, both in terms of desired awareness and empirical benchmarks. The goals are measurable because they can be measured with empirical data rather than a general conclusion, and the goals are achievable based on our understanding of Warner Bros. and DC blockbuster film capabilities in the past (with some adjustments made to account for COVID-19). Finally, our goals are relevant because they are all connected to measuring the awareness that the social media campaign has brought to the film’s release, and our goals are time-bound because we have specific time periods by which to judge the campaign’s success across the three separate phases (pre-release, live release, post-release).
For the WW84 campaign we have decided to focus our efforts on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter for specific reasons. Our campaign involves a lot of stunning visuals and the use of influencers, both of which are best harbored, in our opinion, by the Instagram platform. Our campaign also involves the utilization of hashtags to achieve trending status, which is best done on the Twitter platform, and the Facebook platform will allow us to target Facebook groups that contain our target audience — that is fans of comic books, fans of DC, and fans of feminism and strong female characters.
Specifically, our target market for Facebook will be comic book fans, because there are so many existing Facebook groups dedicated to comic book enthusiasts already in existence. On Instagram we are more focused on the 18–32 age demographic that makes up more than 30% of Instagram’s user base (Clement, 2020). This is because we believe that this age demographic will be young enough to enjoy a superhero film with its action and fantasy elements, but old enough to also appreciate the feminist qualities that Wonder Woman represents. Finally, our target market on Twitter is made up of those actively involved in the feminist cause, because of Twitter’s younger, more politically active user demographic. WW84 is a blockbuster action film with a strong female lead character portrayed by a strong female actor, and we believe this agenda will receive the most support on the Twitter platform.
We will have different voices for the different platforms based on the target markets we are trying to cater to. For the Instagram platform for which our target market is the 18–32 age group, we plan on having a voice that is exciting and concise. Instagram is filled with lots of exciting content, and to stand out we need to have a voice that conveys just how exciting the release of WW84 is to us and, moreover, how excited our audience should be for it. This excitement should not be reckless and all over the place either; it should be a clear voice that states why the movie is exciting and why you should be excited for it. This way, the audience isn’t just excited but is also informed.
Our voice for the Twitter platform will focus on being efficient and sympathetic. With the limited character count, we need the voice to avoid being over-informative both for logistical purposes and for attention; no one reads a long tweet all the way through anymore! More important than efficiency, however, is that the voice is sympathetic to the Twitter audience meaning that they are commenting on appropriate current events. The Twitter feed shouldn’t just regurgitate information in an apathetic manner; it should be a tone that is approachable and comments on the state of the world, such as acknowledging the Christmas season or tapping into any viral social media trends.
Finally, the voice for our Facebook page will be a professional one; seeing as Facebook has the highest average age of user among the three sites it would behoove the campaign to take a voice that is relevant to the timeline of the film release without being overly flamboyant.
We will definitely be using hashtags for the WW84 campaign across all platforms. Moreover, we will use the same hashtags across the board to ensure campaign consistency and promote engagement conversion from one site to another. The hashtags we will use are: #WW84ChristmasDay #WaitingForWonder (pre-release), #WW84Live #WeekOfWonder (live release), #WW84NowPlaying #WillToWonder (post-release), #WW84 #WonderWoman (across all campaign phases). On all of our platforms we will be utilizing influencers and a few key partnerships to promote the WW84 release. Our main influencers will be Gal Gadot, Pedro Pascal, Chris Pine, and Kristin Wiig. These are the main actors in the WW84 film, and each has a massive social media following that we can tap into. We will set up plans for each to promote the film to their separate audiences, and do a few live feeds and takeovers across the various sites to garner excitement for the film release.
We will have a few secondary influencers as well in pursuit of the specific target markets outlined previously. We will work Taylor Swift, a famous female singer who holds a high social media following and can work with us to reach female fans across the globe. We will also work Kelly Sue DeConnick, a prominent comic book writer who will help our campaign reach a more niche comic book fan base as well as appeal to the feminist market seeing as she is a prominent female writer. In terms of partnerships, we plan on working with the social media teams of the following entities: Warner Bros, HBO Max, and DC Comics. With their help, we can promote our content and create UGC initiatives that reach several different markets. We also plan on using these partnerships to allow our influencers to reach a more specific target market as well, so the relationship between the three groups (campaign, influencers, partnerships) is extremely important.