Chimichanga! How Budweiser pulled-off the coolest pre-screening buzz for Deadpool with influencer marketing

Brand

Budweiser

Tool

Qoruz

Budweiser collaborated with Fox Studio for a pre-release promotion of Deadpool 2  before it hit the screens in the country. The idea was to leverage this association for strong brand recall, while creating nationwide buzz with the craziness of ‘Merc with a Mouth’ and the awesomeness of influencer word-of-mouth.

Objective

For the pre-release buzz, Budweiser wanted to discover and collaborate with social media influencers with an organic affinity for comics, entertainment, Hollywood, and wanted them to create content that would compel the audience to go watch the movie in theatres, while also reinforcing the fun, youthful, social imagery of the brand.

Also Read: Case Study: How Airbnb customized #LiveThere for the Indian market

Execution

The premium beer brand decided to host an exclusive invite only pre-screening of Deadpool-2. The challenge however was that in a time when pre-screenings have become fairly regular experience, how to get this pre-screening stand out in a slew of movie premiers.

Budweiser roped in Qoruz to make sure it selected the best-fit influencers for this campaign.  Firstly, influencers were screened based on their interest match with the brand’s ideal influencer persona.

A database of more than 2 lakh influencers on Qoruz was screened keeping in mind around 10 parameters like genuine interest in Deadpool and Hollywood movies, other similar demographics, and engagement. The selected influencers were approached and their performance was monitored.

Since the planned pre-screening was scheduled a day prior to the release, it was important for the screening process to be seamless.The entire campaign was executed, managed, and monitored with the help of Qoruz Rewards – an experiential campaign management tool designed specifically for influencer marketing campaigns.The influencers were contacted via email and after the completion of the formalities, branded rewards were sent to them, which they used to generate content on their social media handles.  While the influencers showed off their rewards and cool branded merchandise, and thanked Budweiser for arranging such an exclusive experience for them, word spread across the social media and the movie and the brand caught the audience’s attention.

The key to the content generated by the influencers after being a part of the pre-screening was that they used Budweiser merchandise in the pictures they posted on Instagram. This led to curiosity among Deadpool fans with a number of celebrities too reaching out to the brand for the much spoken about merchandise and pre-screening tickets.

Results

The campaign saw a total of 75 influencers participating with around 115 content pieces being generated. The content had a long lasting reach of over 1.5 million. In this way, the rated-R superstar and his army of influencers displayed ‘Maximum Effort’ and Budweiser got a taste of victory too!