The Campaign

TCL sponsored the global premieres of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” to increase brand recognition in key markets and grow its Facebook fan base. Instead of simply slapping TCL’s logo all over the premieres, we invited our target market’s most popular YouTube stars to own both sides of the velvet rope. Our YouTube stars worked with the X-men stars to drive interest in the TCL Facebook page. The X-Men campaign generated 455,267,556 global impressions. TCL’s Facebook fan base grew 1322%. And in the key market of North America, sales jumped more than 65% as a direct result of the campaign.

The Brief

Our goal was to leverage our partnership with Fox to raise awareness of the TCL brand through experiential, social, shared and earned media, build TCL’s brand equity and awareness through thousands of new Facebook fans, and grow TCL’s global positioning as a leader in entertainment marketing. TCL is transforming from a traditional electronics manufacturer to a global entertainment technology company. We wanted to announce that transformation to a global audience by pairing the X-Men stars with the biggest stars in social media, and then leverage that social media engagement to attract young consumers to the TCL Facebook page.

Results

In May TCL leveraged the X-Men for a total of 455,267,556 global impressions. Over 16,967,280 unique users visited the TCL Facebook page, with an average daily user engagement rate of over 40%. TCL’s Facebook fan base grew 1322% from May 4, 2014, to 53,696 by the end of the month. In the key market of North America, sales jumped more than 65% as a direct result of the campaign. Grace Randolph produced nine videos with cast members and a TCL-X-Men Quiz Shout Out video on her YouTube channel. The videos were released before, during and after the New York premiere, and generated a total of 246,572 views. Ryan Higa shared 4 posts on his Facebook page, which has about 1.4 million fans, uploaded photos on Instagram, promoted the TCL X-Men Quiz and produced a post-event video blog using #TCL #XMenLive hashtags. The video generated 447,276 views in May alone.

Execution

YouTubers with high reach, credibility and social currency among fans acted as TCL “reporters” at the Premieres and created social channel content before, during and after the Global Premiere. Building off the popularity of BuzzFeed quizzes, we also developed a quiz with content drawn from the current and past X-Men movies and comics that was hosted on TCL’s global Facebook page. Our YouTube stars helped promote the quiz, and Grace Randolph even enlisted the help of X-Men star Patrick Stewart to help get fans to the Facebook page. Grace did fantastic interviews with the X-Men stars before, during and after the premieres. Ryan Higa kept the buzz going with his “Photobombing X-Men” video. We arranged interviews with traditional media for TCL executives to discuss their entertainment marketing strategy. And we engaged bloggers with large followings in both tech and entertainment to reach out to their readers.

The Situation

TCL is the largest home electronics company in China, but is relatively unknown internationally. Previous sponsorships of Hollywood blockbusters like “Transformers 3” and “Cloud Atlas” had improved brand awareness, but had little impact. Our challenge was to take TCL’s existing entertainment marketing campaign to the next level. TCL is reaching out to a global audience. But simply putting their name on a movie wasn’t creating the engagement they needed. We worked with Fox to leverage the global premiers of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” to increase TCL’s global brand recognition and to grow its Facebook fan base.

The Strategy

We sponsored the global premieres of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” to create an emotional connection with fans and drive traffic to and engagement across TCL global and regional Facebook pages. TCL had the use of exclusive Fox content, including movie trailers, for use across its social media channels. TCL also had the right to invite its own media representatives. Instead of working with mainstream media, we leveraged YouTube celebrities who have strong followings among our target audience. The TCL premiere of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” hit seven cities around the world, and we selected our YouTube stars for maximum impact in our key markets. They worked with Fox and the X-Men stars to increase TCL brand awareness and drive interest in the TCL Facebook page. YouTuber Grace Randolph even got X-Men star Patrick Stewart to promote the ‘Are You An X-Men X-Pert’ Quiz, driving Facebook fan acquisition.