success stories

eOne

Engaging at scale and exceeding targets with Spark Ads

eOne TikTok success story thumbnail eOne TikTok success story logo
30.7 %
View Through Rate
2.2 M
Reach
£.003
Cost Per View

The Objective

Generating awareness at scale to increase engagement and ticket sales

eOne shares bold stories with audiences around the world by enabling and creating world-class content for distribution. It’s where passion meets possibility. They're involved in every step of the entertainment value chain from development and production to marketing and distribution. Think of them as having the reach of a studio with the flexibility of an indie. Seen a good film recently? eOne is probably involved.


For the cinematic release of The Woman King, eOne wanted to build awareness and hype around the film at scale driving ticket sales. The Woman King is a historical epic inspired by actual events. It’s set in the 1820s in the Kingdom of Dahomey (present-day Benin), at the time one of the most powerful states of Western Africa. 


Viola Davis stars as a general training up the next generation of the Agojie, the all-female warrior unit that protected Dahomey. Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, and John Boyega also star. Gina Prince-Bythewood directs, and it's written by Dana Stevens, loosely based on a story she wrote with Maria Bello.


The marketing approach was to position the story as immediate, fierce and momentous, a story never heard before. Of vital importance was ensuring that the campaign felt fresh and relevant. It couldn't feel old, tired or weighed down in history and lectures. 


The focus of the action-packed film is the story and motivations of the Agojie. So the campaign would be introducing this to audiences. Like the Agojie the campaign needed to feel like an urgent battle cry, one to get audiences into cinemas.


The campaign looked to connect with a diverse audience and play off the upcoming cast, and the style, swagger and bravado of the film. To succeed it needed to appeal to younger crowds looking for representative and relatable stories and heroes and those just looking for some movie inspiration.


New to TikTok, the platform presented an ideal opportunity to engage the target audience and build some hype. The team wanted to use it as part of the marketing mix around the film’s cinematic release. With no organic presence on TikTok, this would be their first UK-specific campaign. 


The Solution

Using in-house content and Spark Ads to boost reach

eOne’s agency partner Influence Digital planned and implemented the campaign's paid media while the team worked on the creative content in-house. Hands-on support and strategic campaign input also came courtesy of TikTok in both the lead-up to and during the campaign launch.


Generating awareness and video views were the goals. With plenty of footage available the creative approach was twofold. First, offer audiences an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the film with select featurettes. Second, increase the critical quality of the film by using quotes from the actors and stars. To ensure creative content felt as native to TikTok as possible the team used a mix of traditional TV/AV spots with more direct-to-camera style content. 


With so much filmed footage available, Spark Ads were the perfect tool for the task. The team could use them to boost their reach by leveraging organic posts to publish ads using their own account.  Spark Ads use posts from real TikTok accounts, so all views, comments, shares, likes, and follows gained from boosting campaign creative get attributed to the organic posts. 


Clicking on the ads took users to a Powster site for The Woman King which pulled in details of nearby cinemas and screening times for the film. To gauge the campaign’s success the team looks at three metrics for their KPIs; Reach, Cost Per View and number of Video Views.


Targeting a demographic based in the UK and Northern Ireland aged 18-34, the campaign ran from the end of September to the middle of October 2022.


The Results

Engaging the target audiences and exceeding campaign KPIs

The campaign was a sure-fire hit. People flocked to the cinema exceeding the UK Box Office Targets.


TikTok was a vital part of the wider marketing plan helping drive incremental scale and awareness across the target 18-34 cinema audience.


The campaign numbers also highlighted some interesting statistics in the target demographic. Those aged 25-34 were the most engaged with an average View Through Rate (VTR) of 35% versus 29% for those aged 18-24. 


This is in line with the targeted core audience, but it shows that TikTok isn't all about the younger demographic. It's a highly effective channel for reaching older-skewing audiences as well. 


The team is planning on using TikTok as an integral component and channel for their future theatrical releases on the silver screen.

quote marks - razzmatazz

TikTok was an enjoyable and efficient partner to work with. The set-up was simple, the targeting focused and proved an effective source of investment.

Max Tyler, Marketing Executive, Theatrical Distribution
Film - UK