The legacy of Bruce Lee carries on in Max Original Series Warrior, based on Lee’s writings. Warrior’s season 3 premiere provided an excellent opportunity to bring back longtime fans, and introduce new ones, while honoring Lee’s 50th anniversary of his passing. We wanted to create buzz and sustain excitement while transcending the AAPI audience and appealing to all communities leading up to the premiere by bringing the Warrior world to fans locally and globally through an innovative campaign that’s at the intersection of technology, culture and entertainment. Collaborating with renowned multicultural mural artists, we aimed to bring the Warrior world to fans worldwide, celebrating Bruce Lee's influence and the Season 3 premiere.
With a legacy that transcends the AAPI audience, it was important for us to honor Bruce Lee’s influence across all communities. We partnered with diverse artists and commissioned interactive murals in SF/NY/LA’s Chinatowns, three of the biggest in the US and inspired by Warrior’s show setting. We made sure the locations for the murals were easily accessible by foot traffic.
To elevate diverse storytelling and preserve history, we partnered with the Chinese Historical Society of America to develop an entertaining / educational augmented reality experience with relevant historical information and artifacts from the show.
A QR code embedded in each mural transported users into the world of Warrior through a fully immersive AR experience, where they could explore a 360 spherical map of the Warrior set, historical weapons featured in the show, and a Season 3 preview. We partnered with the Chinese Historical Society of America and The Bruce Lee Foundation to provide information on the historical connections within Warrior and the foundation’s mission. Globally, fans could partake via a link shared through social media.
Initially, we planned to create an immersive AR experience triggered by pointing a smartphone camera at the murals. However, implementing this for three unique murals within a short timeframe proved challenging as the murals were being designed and painted simultaneously. To overcome this we created a uniform AR experience, and embedded custom QR codes in each mural while sharing them on social media, enabling both local and global fans to access the AR experience by scanning the QR codes on their smartphones to literally step into the virtual world of Warrior.
To gain some traction, we invited influencers, press, and select fans to attend the mural unveilings. The murals were revealed at the same local time and same day in each city across New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Warrior cast and crew hosted and helped speak to Bruce Lee’s legacy, influence, and the Warrior show itself. Talent, influencers, and outlets like Ad Week and Gold House posted across social media and/or on their websites.
We also developed an exclusive AR walking tour for fans to discover San Francisco’s Chinatown “Through the Lens of the Blade,” featuring integrated content from the Warrior podcast into an experiential audio-scape that users can listen to while exploring Warrior-themed AR sites.
On social media, we tapped creator Tim Chantarangsu to recap the previous seasons to his 1.5MM+ followers and continued to sustain buzz throughout the season with organic posts giving fans an in-depth behind the scenes look at each mural creation, reveal and AR experience.
Without a media budget, our campaign relied solely on the organic efforts of Max/Cast to drive awareness for the new season of Warrior.
Across Social, our murals generated 320k+ engagements, 89k+ reach, 1.9M+ impressions, and 5200+ conversation mentions. Our Season 1 & 2 recap video with creator Tim Chantarangsu reached over 280K+ fans before the Season 3 premiere.
Our AR experience reached 2.3K unique users across 97 countries. 86% of users were our key audience demographics of 25-35 year olds; time spent an average of 20 seconds and a 36% engagement rate. 63% of users accessed the AR experience directly from the QR code.
From a PR perspective, our Warrior campaign successfully generated significant media coverage and engagement. Warrior star Olivia Cheng spoke with local news outlets in San Francisco, discussing the upcoming season and experiencing the AR walking tour in Chinatown. In New York, talent Andrew Koji and Perry Yung made notable appearances at the mural unveiling and Warrior screening, with press outlets such as Mixed Asian Media and Subtle Asian Traits covering the events. In Los Angeles, Dianne Doan and mural artist Swank participated in interviews with outlets including ETTV and ASAM News. The PR team also pitched the tech/AR aspect of the activation to Adweek. Overall, the campaign reached an audience of 20MM, garnered 85.4K estimated impressions, secured 20 pieces of coverage, and received over 900 engagements.
Given our incredible results across social & PR, we consider this successful base on our key KPIs for 2023.
