Advertising Case Study

20th Century FoxCompany Background

Twentieth Century Fox is a division of Fox Filmed

Entertainment, one of the world’s largest producers

and distributors of motion pictures. The studio’s

Oliver Stone film, Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps,

was the follow-up to the 1987 sensation Wall Street.

Michael Douglas returns to his Oscar®-winning

role as one of the screen’s most notorious villains,

Gordon Gekko. Emerging from a lengthy prison

stint, Gekko finds himself on the outside of a world

he once dominated. Looking to repair his damaged

relationship with his daughter Winnie, Gekko forms

an alliance with her fiancé Jacob (Shia LaBeouf).  Can

Jacob and Winnie really trust the ex-financial titan,

whose relentless efforts to redefine himself in a

different era have unexpected consequences?

Objective

A longtime advertiser on Facebook, Fox had two

major objectives for its campaign leading up to

the release of Wall Street - Money Never Sleeps on

September 24, 2010. The studio wanted to acquire

a critical mass of fans (its target was 500,000) to its

Facebook Page Wall Street – Money Never Sleeps,

a goal that would give it a sizeable base of people

to engage with by providing content and updates

about the film. The other related objective was

using Facebook to drive word-of-mouth marketing—

leveraging social advocacy to get friends telling

friends about the movie on Facebook—to fill theater

seats. “The ultimate measure of success for our

Facebook Executive Summary

Client:

www.facebook.com/

officialwallstreetmoneyneversleeps

Objective:

To acquire fans of a movie’s Facebook

Page and increase box office by

driving word-of-mouth marketing on

Facebook

Solution:

A Facebook Ads campaign with a

series of creative messages that

varied to attract both older and

younger audiences

Key Lessons:

• Therecanbeahighrateofad

recall and message awareness

among the movie-going public on

Facebook

• Facebookcanbeaneffective

platform to generate the word-of-

mouth marketing that studios are

looking for

“Ads were important in the overall strategy because they were the front end of the funnel to drive people in. Once they’re on the Page,

it’s all about making them an evangelist to help us sell our movie, but the first challenge is to recruit them through impactful creative

units, to get them into the club.”

Jake Zim

Vice President of Digital Marketing, 20th Century Fox.

Advertising Case Study

marketing campaigns is our opening weekend box

office,” explains Jake Zim, Vice President of Digital

Marketing at 20th Century Fox.

Fox had a particular marketing challenge for this

movie. It had to attract both the older audience

members who were familiar with the original film

from the late 1980s, and younger ones interested

in seeing two of its 20-something starlets Mulligan

and LaBeouf. “This project was unique in that

we had a dual audience target,” Jake says. “We

recognized that Facebook provides us a canvas on

which we could attempt to reach those audiences

and create conversation through targeting, social

advocacy and through specific messaging and

bring them all under one umbrella.”

Approach

Fox launched its campaign on Facebook about a

month prior to the movie’s release with a series

of Target Blocks, which are three-day periods of

heavy advertising to a targeted audience. The early

phases included Premium Like Ads and Premium

Video Ads with content centered on the return of

Gordon Gekko 23 years after the movie’s original

release. “We wanted to invoke the Gordon Gekko

Mystique to fans of the first film,” says Jake. “The

legend. He’s back. He’s out of jail.”

In the ensuing weeks, the advertising phases

focused on LaBeouf and Mulligan, with Premium

Like Ads, stating that “Shia LaBeouf stars in Wall

Street.” Many of the ads encouraged people to

like the movie’s Page for exclusive updates and

clips from the movie. “It’s the story of a guy, Shia

LaBeouf, who was conflicted between the two

things that he loved—money and the prestige that

comes with having money—and the girl that he’s

madly in love with,” says Jake. “So on the Page,

what we tried to do was create content that spoke

to his conflict through those creative messages.”

For the final phase, Fox ran a “Reach Block,” a type

of ad buy on Facebook that guarantees a brand

will reach 100 percent of its target audience over a

24-hour period on Facebook Home Pages and other

premium locations. Unlike the previous ad buys

which targeted specific ages, the Reach Block was

broad, serving ads to everyone 13 and older. “Ads

were important in the overall strategy because

they were the front end of the funnel to drive

people in,” says Jake. “Once they’re on the Page, it’s

all about making them an evangelist to help us sell

our movie, but the first challenge is to recruit them

through impactful creative units, to get them into

the club.” Jake continues that the creative specs

on Facebook can present challenges for movie

marketers.

Advertising Case Study

Results

• 26percentofpeopleinterviewedinanexit

poll after seeing Wall Street – Money Never

Sleeps told media research firm CinemaScore

they remembered seeing advertising for the

movie on Facebook

• Morethan260,000peoplelikedtheWallStreet

- Money Never Sleeps Facebook Page, giving

Fox a sizeable base of people to engage with

on movie content and updates, but well below

their stated goal of 500,000

• Atrackingstudyfoundmorethan1.1million

people on Facebook intended to see the movie

after being exposed to the ads, suggesting $4

million in incremental opening-weekend box

office for Fox

“The biggest positive takeaway for me was in our

exit polls,” says Jake. “Now what we still need

to do is connect the dots from that awareness

to an actual transaction so that we have a real

understanding of what input we need to get that

kind of output. But the initial understanding that

people were aware of this platform as a marketing

tool because they basically raised their hand and

said ‘yes, I saw advertising’ was eye opening.”

The Future

Jake says he’ll continue to look for ways to create

conversations that lead to box office. “Social media

as a platform in general is perfectly aligned with

that objective in that it is architecture built around

conversation,” says Jake. “And Facebook is sort of

the epiphany of what is inherently a network world

laid out online so those conversations can spread.”

Jake adds that marketing has basically reached an

inflection point. “Most of us digital marketers and

marketers are adjusting to the understanding that

the control is really in the hands of the users,” says

Jake. “And we have to give them the right materials

so that they will become evangelists for our product.”