Social Media Campaign: Saw7 and Hoyts

Cinema goers get punk’d by Hoyts and Saw7. I love it when companies stop being politically correct, worrying about heart attacks and being sued, and just go totally EVIL on their customers.

Ok I admit,  I’m a bit down on social media campaigns. Especially if they have no strategy behind them. Just a few weeks of blasting some crappy ad through Facebook and Youtube and calling it “engagement” doesn’t really do it for me.   If it’s agency created content, professionally edited, professionally uploaded and distributed and acts as an ad, it’s not really very social media-y, is it? Well, Social Ads, mebbe?  Social media as just another expensive highly produced broadcast channel. S’not how it’s meant to be.

Then again a social media campaign can be a bit of lowkey fun, and not overly produced or too up itself.  And while tonnes of companies forget how to play with their customers, it’s playing that creates brand love more often than not. There’s probably an adage in Advertising that if you can’t give the consumers something entertaining and intriguing for low budget, give them something glossy and overly produced on an expensive budget. If there is no such adage, there should be!  Simple, fun, memorable. How hard can that be? 😛

All of which is a roundabout way of saying: I love that cinema goers at Hoyts got punk’d by their cinema. Awesome.

The guys at the 51second mark are best.

I dare YOU to hide behind your shop counter, or customer service booth this Halloween and scare the bejesus out of your customers. Tell the boss I told you to. 😛

How it worked:

People were asked to enter a SAW7 3D branded photo booth and watch the trailer (at their own risk!) and then have their pictures taken.

At the end of the trailer the promotional staff told consumers to start the photo booth pictures.
On the third flash, a promotional staff member hiding in the back of the booth scared people inside the booth with fake limbs or by opening the back curtain and appearing as Jigsaw puppet while pictures were being taken.

From Marcio Nery at Mitchell Communications – It is also on Facebook: http://ow.ly/2WPpD

What do you think? Silliness abound? Waste of time? Fun? Over engineered?

PatchouliW pointed this other SAW – oops Scary Movie – video out to me yesterday – also hilarious. I was being rebuked for criticising Dr Phil. He is silly in this one, though, isn’t he!

If the audience is now the former audience, then they are fair game to become part of the marketing cycle, no? Game on!