The Razor Report: June 2012

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Razor helps make the Avengers the biggest movie of all time

(in a teeny tiny, don't blink you might miss it kind of way)

By now many of you have seen the blockbuster movie of the year, The Avengers. It currently boasts the biggest opening weekend ever, beating Harry Potter and his massive movies. The marketing machine behind this movie has been nothing short of spectacular, leaving no stone unturned. And for once the movie lived up to the hype. Big time. So what did our tiny shop in Moncton have to do with this mega movie? Well, not a lot. In fact it was an ant-like contribution, but still one we are very proud of. One of marketing partners for the movie was Walmart. They wanted a way to leverage their relationship with Marvel and the movie and drive traffic to the stores to sell Avengers toys and merchandise.

They enlisted the very talented folks at Ad-Dispatch from Dartmouth, the leader in Augmented Reality. They wanted to develop an Augmented Reality game that requires users to go to Walmart to unlock different Avengers by using the app and pointing their phone at posters and displays throughout the store. Once all the Avengers were assembled, you could fight Loki and help save the world. We had done some work with Ad-Dispatch before but were still thrilled when they asked us to develop the name for the app and design the icon. Then it got even better, Ad-Dispatch had to create a 30 second promotional spot for the app that would run on 15,000 screens in the US opening weekend -- and they asked us to write the script and develop the story board. Fan-freakin-tastic. Of course like many projects the timing was very tight and in this case everything was super secret. The biggest challenge was that there was already an official Marvel App for the movie so to avoid confusion, we could were not permitted to use the Avenger name or any of the characters in what we did. We had to transmit the same feel and energy, just without any direct reference to Marvel, Avengers, Hulk, Captain America, etc. After many iterations and discussions, we landed on Super Hero: AR and the design you see here.

The development of the of the script also came with its creative challenges. The mandate was to demonstrate what the app did in a very simple and straight forward way, and be approved by Marvel, Walmart and T- mobile (another sponsor in the ad). Here's a rough of the script of the storyboard:

Some of the full colour boards:

And finally... here's what the final commercial looks like. The App is only available in US, as only the Walmarts in the states participated. What a fantastic project... and who knows, maybe there be more like this in the future. That too would be Amazing.

Be careful when trapezing with hot coffee

Great campaign (and idea from Tim Hortons) the Timmy run. Here's another spot: You can organize your own Tim Horton's run from their site too - check it out at timyrun.com