Our Work
Paramount’s The Uninvited
Background
In the winter of 2008, Paramount tasked Buddy Media with developing an interactive, social media application to promote the upcoming release of the horror movie ‘The Uninvited.’ Paramount’s marketing executives wanted a dark and spooky application built around nightmares, one of the core themes of the film. Movie stills and trailers needed to be housed within the application, but would only play a secondary role in the user interface. In addition, Buddy Media needed to supply an embeddable widget version of the application, as well as the media support to drive a targeted audience of North American youths, between 13-25 years of age, to both promotional platforms.
Objectives
- Build an engaging Facebook social app-vertisement that would serve as an effective promotional platform for Paramount’s upcoming film ‘The Uninvited.’
- Create an embeddable stand-alone open web widget with limited application functionality.
- Drive targeted users to ‘The Uninvited’ Facebook app-vertisement through the use of social banner ads.
Solution
Buddy Media worked with Paramount to create a unique user interface that coincided with the dark and ominous tone of ‘The Uninvited.’ The application’s main functionality was a nightmare analyzer utility that allowed users to input dream keywords in order to learn the hidden meanings behind their nightly R.E.M. interludes. Users could then share their nightmares with friends, comment on other people’s nightmares, or offer their own analysis of their friends’ dreams.
The final step in the development process involved adding a video trailer and production stills to raise awareness about the film and its young stars. Buddy Media’s development team pared down the functionality of the Facebook application and launched ‘The Uninvited’ on the film’s website, with open-web media support. Social banner ads, which dynamically pulled information from user profiles were developed for the application’s social media campaign. In less than two weeks, Buddy Media had surpassed the campaigns goals of driving unique users to the Facebook application and unique visits to the widget.
