A movie’s success depends on the ability to drive awareness and interest around it’s release. To help pump excitement for “Spy Game,” Universal Studios launched an online campaign utilizing a mix of online marketing techniques.

It is estimated that nearly fifty percent of an average movie’s total gross occurs in the first week. In a highly fragmented entertainment environment, it is critical then to drive awareness and interest around a movie and its date of release.

In November of 2001, Universal Studios was set to release Spy Game, the thriller starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt (reunited for the first time in nearly a decade since Redford directed Pitt in “A River Runs Through It”). As part of the marketing mix, Universal approached ValueClick to create an online program to ultimately drive consumers to the box office.

A combination of online media elements was used, including traditional skyscraper ads and rich-media EyeBlaster units, to direct traffic to the official movie site and a sweepstakes promotion micro-site. As Lauren Kay of The Content Project states, “the use of rich media technologies such as EyeBlaster or Unicast are a compelling and effective method of enabling the target audience to experience or sample the product, whether it’s a new movie, DVD or music release.”

The micro-site included a game wherein users searched the site to find answers to a series of questions about the movie. Participants who found the answers were eligible to enter the sweepstakes for various prizes, and Universal in turn was able to collect valuable information about each user.

Over 22,000 qualified e-mail leads were generated as a result of the sweepstakes, and they were all delivered an e-mail one day prior to the opening of the movie. As Elias Plishner from Universal McCann shares, “good e-mail marketers make the extra effort to over-qualify the registrant, especially today when e-mail spamming is as high as it has even been.” Qualification certainly helped, as more than 50 percent of the recipients opened the e-mail. And of course, Universal now has a captive opt-in e-mail audience to increase the awareness for future Universal movies. The campaign also delivered over 5 million impressions—driving attention and awareness—along with a significant volume of traffic to the official movie site.

When looking at the entertainment category as a whole, “experiential marketing – surrounding the consumer in an online environment that incorporates promotions, content integration, sweepstakes, etc. – has been particularly effective,” said Nick Pahade, vice president and managing director of Beyond Interactive. The convergence of these forces, along with the powerful pull of online gaming, will continue to drive marketing initiatives in the entertainment category.