THE BIG NIGHT

Bronze Spike
TitleTHE BIG NIGHT
BrandSUBARU
Product / ServiceSUBARU FORESTER
CategoryA01. Best Fictional Program, Series or Film where a client has successfully created a drama, comedy or miniseries around a product or brand
EntrantADK JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Entrant Company ADK JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Contributing Company ADK JAPAN Tokyo, JAPAN
Production Company GREAT GUNS London, UNITED KINGDOM

Credits

Name Company Position
Dave Jenner Noah Writer
Belinda Grew Absolute London Post Production Producer
Matt Turner Absolute London Telecine
Gordana Kazic Bas Production Art/Props
Katja Soltes Bas Production Production Designer
Sid Baarnhoorn Sid Baarnhoorn Music Music Composer
Alenka Protic Bas Production Line Producer
Rok Ban Bas Production Executive Producer
Jerome Robert/Ian Foster Great Guns Dop
Masahiro Kobayashi Asatsu-Dk Inc. Account Executive
Jun Takahashi Asatsu-Dk Inc. Account Director
Keiko Oda Asatsu-Dk Inc. Coordination Director
Hideyuki Ichikawa Asatsu-Dk Inc. Agency Producer
Simone Nesti Great Guns Editor's Assistant
Max Thomas Great Guns Production Assistant
Sheridan Thomas Great Guns Producer/Writer
Jeremy McWilliams Great Guns Head Of Global Partnerships
Jeremy Haccoun Great Guns Director/Editor/Writer
Tatsushi Kataoka Asatsu-Dk Inc. Planner
Yoshihiro Miura Asatsu-Dk Inc. Creative Director
Rob Yescombe Great Guns Writer

The Campaign

This campaign was produced in 9 languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish for markets outside of Japan, where Subaru does not have sufficient media budget for TV. Since these markets differ greatly in terms of what people find entertaining, an innovative interactive system was chosen to offer enormous combinations of choices that decide how the story develops. This proved to be effective for a movie that will be seen by people of various markets where the perception of the Subaru Forester differs and is quite broad.

Results

CHALLENGE Since Fuji Heavy Industries (FHI), the headquarters for the Subaru brand had mostly been producing campaign material that centered around the car itself, the client felt the necessity to provide their distributors with promotional material for the Forester that will be more engaging. However, this was their first attempt to commission a global interactive movie. OBJECTIVE So the objective was to produce an interactive film for the Subaru Forester that will be entertaining for various markets around the world, and also one that will be highly interactive and engaging. The aim was also to provide distributors with product communication material that will contribute to giving the Subaru brand more emotional value. STRATEGY The agency worked with the production company on a script that would be entertaining, and would also be appreciated by people in various countries. In order to keep people interested, and to encourage them to come back, the script was developed to offer various selections, resulting in a seamless story that branches out into 40 different endings. EXECUTION production Company had experience not only in production of car films that require various locations, but also in production of online games. This is how we were able to produce an interactive experience that was so seamless, with so many different outcomes. The story was kept very simple and clear, but to offer a truly interactive experience, the script for this narrative-branching interactive experience turned out to be 45 pages long. And the decisions that people made throughtout the movie, by clicking on anything red (or missing it) would result in 98,304 permutations. The subtle interface proved to be very engaging, but the complex decision tree that was devised meant there would be 174 individual film segments to navigate.

The link to the interactive movie was posted on the Subaru global website: http://www.subaru-global.com/special/2013forester/ Since the timing of the launch of the Forester differed among the various markets, it was up to the distributors to create a link to the interactive movie from their local websites at the timing appropriate for their market. Therefore, there were no proactive promotional activities for the interactive movie conducted by the client, the global headquarters.

The client was very happy to be able to provide an entertaining interactive film to their distributors in Asia, Russia, Europe, and South America. Even though the film is approximately 9 minutes long when played till the end, overall user engagement has been around 80%, and average time visitors stay on the video is around 13.4 minutes. This comes out to an average retention time of about 150%. The film has received very positive coverage in quite a few online publications including Campaign Asia, UK, & USA, Marketing Week, UK Motor News, etc. The Subaru Forester is doing extremely well in sales, and the client, Fuji Heavy Industries, is experiencing 20% increase in sales in their overseas markets.