For the long-awaited release of Zack Snyder’s Justice League (aka the Snyder Cut), Home Brew envisioned a social campaign unmatched in scope and size to delight the fans that had waited years for this film to premiere. With a very actively engaged audience spanning across the globe, we wanted our campaign to lead the conversation while remaining nimble enough to adapt to real-time trends so that the campaign stayed culturally relevant at all times. In close partnership with HBO Max, we set out to create a holistic digital marketing strategy, best-in-class creative, strategic content rollout plan, and an approach to community management that would authentically capture Zack Snyder’s vision for the film, successfully engage and excite the passionate fan base, and ultimately drive awareness for the film’s debut on the HBO Max streaming platform.
Before it was ever announced for HBO Max, the Snyder Cut had developed a dedicated following. During the making of 2017’s Justice League, Zack Snyder was forced to leave the project due to a family tragedy and was unable to finish the original vision he had for the film. As years went on, rumors circulated that he had a rough final cut of the film and fans began demanding the chance to watch it. In 2020, Warner Bros. announced that they would finance the completion of the Snyder Cut, now titled Zack Snyder’s Justice League, and launch it in 2021 on HBO Max.
With the pressure of a legendary director’s cut mixed with high expectations from the fans, we knew the primary task was to get it right. Everything we did in this campaign was in service of Zack Snyder’s vision for his film and the passionate fanbase who had been hoping to see it for years.
With an incredibly Twitter-savvy audience, our strategy was to be where the fans are and use platform-specific tools to engage with the fans in meaningful ways. The campaign on Twitter used Branded Hashtags, Live Streaming, and a creative use of fan DMs that spawned millions of engagements and conversations.
Our branded hashtags featured black and white art of each of the heroes and villains in the film. To give each their time to shine and extend the window of impact, each branded emoji was released individually over a week period along with exclusive clips and hero art of the character.
When it came to the red carpet premiere, we wanted to give our Twitter followers a stake in the event. So, we co-streamed to Twitter and YouTube and sourced fan reaction Tweets in real-time to display on the live broadcast.
Our final strategy relied on giving fans a voice and an impact in this campaign. To do that, we designed a scavenger hunt puzzle campaign. With 20 days until the premiere, we seeded out 20 unique images across 20 brands and carefully selected fan social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, Vero, and Discord. Participants were instructed to post their images at specific times to create a search frenzy for the images.
Home Brew executed a winning campaign that delighted fans and drew in new viewers for a record-breaking release that earned 34.7B social impressions. As a result of our campaign, the film had over 20,000 social posts from global audiences every day for over 60 days. The accounts experienced 3,514% follower growth and gained 734,851 new fans. As a result of our owned channel amplification, 82% of views on the first trailer within one week were driven organically.
Exceeding even our highest goals, our campaign worked with the passionate fan community to make Zack Snyder’s Justice League the #1 Most-Discussed movie on Twitter in 2021.
