BACKYARD CINEMA
The most magical destination to watch a movie
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Backyard Cinema: The most magical destination to watch a movie
October 2022 saw the return of Backyard Cinema in London with its enchanting festive film experience. This awe-inspiring movie destination tasked us with creating talkability around the autumn winter schedule to drive ticket sales for the season.
The festive-themed experience took guests through a maze of wonderful immersive sets, from the carriages of a 1920s inspired steam train to a magical star-studded room, as they made their journey to the Northern lights. It was an experience that lent itself to the Christmas period, however, our challenge was to generate coverage and ticket sales as soon as the first tickets went on sale in early September.
A difficult task ensued. People had barely started thinking about Halloween, let alone Christmas. And with some lofty ticket targets, we had to be strategic with our comms to ensure we remained culturally relevant to media, influencers and consumers throughout the entire season.
Luckily, we’ve had lots of experience in delivering coverage for experiences and we quickly got to work formulating a plan that included a hard-working press office, plans for a press night reveal, influencer engagement and paid partnerships.
We started with press night and secured over 150 guests from influential titles including Time Out, Secret London, Hello magazine and SheerLuxe.
We then invited influencers to join us at a time of their choosing throughout the season, resulting in a stream of social posts from the likes of Roxy Nafousi, Jessica Ford and Coco Belle.
We carved up our storytelling to focus on the culturally newsworthy elements at that time such as drag at Halloween and cabaret at Christmas and of course promoted the relevant films. As we worked through Halloween, half term, Christmas and into the New Year, we issued updated news alerts to key listings, consumer lifestyle, national and regional press to land coverage for Backyard Cinema in relevant, timely slots that resonated with our target audience.
In addition to the earned approach, we also organised five paid media partnerships with The Nudge, Time Out, Secret London, Gaydio and Unifresher. We used a combination of tactics across the different media platforms, including newsletter content, online articles, on air ads, competitions and paid social content, to ensure maximum exposure to different audiences and used trackable links to monitor platform success.
It was a successful season generating 76 pieces of quality coverage that had an estimated 1.6 million views. Key titles who wrote about the experience included The Evening Standard, Metro, Time Out, Cosmopolitan, Hello Magazine and The Handbook, great social conversation from ‘earned’ influence and successful media partnerships that drove ticket sales.
150+
guests secured from
influential media titles
PAID MEDIA PARTNERSHIPS
incl The Nudge, Time Out, Secret London boosted sales
1.6M
estimated views from 76 pieces
of coverage in 3 months
