Results and Effectiveness

The ‘richness’ we created with digital media worked: 320k people called the phoneline and 230k downloaded the ring tone. This equates to around US$6.7m in box office take, or 12% of the movie’s total box office in Japan. Even better, it equates to 30% of the growth in box office revenue compared to the previous Resident Evil release – yes, this release reversed the trend and actually increased box office revenue!

Creative Execution

First, we created a phone number which was featured in paid-for media; callers to this number heard a code which unlocked new content on Resident Evil Afterlife’s website. This content contained jaw-dropping new footage with an easy-to-pass-on function to create word of mouth. Even better, we created engaging media firsts around this new content: for example, by entering your phone number and name into one area a unique ring tone was sent to you with a simulation of cast character’s calling, screaming, your name as your new ring tone. Because, uniquely in the world, email is Japan’s #1 way of receiving information we made sure that everything could be easily forwarded in this channel with just one click.

Insights, Strategy and the Idea

Horror movie franchises always start off well then box office income decreases with each subsequent release and Resident Evil was no different so our challenge for the release of the latest movie in the franchise, Resident Evil Afterlife, was to ignite interest. The problem was we had nothing new to say: after 15 years and over ten releases people felt they knew all they wanted to about the movie already. With nothing new to say we changed our focus from what we said to how we said it: over-exposure to the movie franchise as a whole meant that as soon as people saw advertising for ‘Resident Evil’, they mentally switched off. We needed something completely different to get people talking to each other about our movie before they saw conventional advertising.