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 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 integrating content from the TCL-sponsored X-men premieres with TCL’s Facebook page, and then leveraging 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.

Execution

YouTubers with high reach, credibility and social currency among fans acted as TCL “reporters” at the Premiere and created social channel content before, during and after the Global Premiere. TCL hosted a cocktail party for media before the premiere, where our bloggers and YouTubers had a chance to meet TCL’s director of branding. Building off the popularity of BuzzFeed quizzes, we also developed a quiz with content drawn from 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. From the first premiere in New York to the final premiere in Melbourne, our Social Command Center in Hong Kong kept fans up to date with exclusive photos and interviews.

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 social media impact. Our challenge was to take TCL’s existing entertainment marketing campaign to the next level. TCL is reaching out to a younger, more international audience. But simply putting their name on a movie wasn’t creating the engagement they needed. Through sponsorship of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” TCL wanted to increase brand recognition in the key North America market and to grow its Facebook fan base.

The Strategy

The TCL Social Command Center in Hong Kong was the key to our integration strategy. The command center worked around the clock integrating content from the TCL X-men premieres around the world. The command center tapped into the “social sharing” behaviors of consumers and passion of X-Men fans to build TCL’s brand equity. We leveraged YouTube celebrities who have strong followings among our target audience – young consumers around the world. We worked with Fox Entertainment and the X-Men stars to increase TCL brand awareness and drive interest in the TCL Facebook page. The ‘Are You An X-Men X-Pert’ Quiz helped hold interest and drive fan acquisition. Our YouTube stars helped promote the quiz, even enlisting support from Patrick Stewart, Professor X himself. In addition we ran TCL contests through broadcast media in premiere cities and leveraged our bloggers to promote the contests.