300 Soundtrack

Problem

Frank Miller's 300 was a highly anticipated movie of blockbuster proportions with an even more epic soundtrack. With movie promotions underway, Warner Brother Records wanted to tap into the online audience of 300 enthusiasts and direct their attention to the movie's soundtrack. But with an original score of heart pounding orchestral tracks, instead of a typical soundtrack which is reliant on established artists, Warner Brother Records was forced to think differently about its online marketing plan.

Approach

In conjunction with the marketing team at Warner Brothers Records, Gupta Media developed an aggressive search engine marketing campaign for the soundtrack that would leverage promotions and media exposure ramping up to the movie's premiere. The campaign's objective was to increase interest in the movie's soundtrack by targeting consumers who were not only excited about the movie, but also individuals interested in a variety of related movie facets including the writer, director, actors, plot components and historic relevance.

The first task was to develop a media player for the soundtrack that would embody the intensity of the film while promoting the tracks that accompanied it. Gupta Media's partners at Hyfn developed a media player that not only conveyed the dark and hostile feel of the movie, but also tracked post-click interest including song plays and purchase intent. With this post-click tracking tool enabled, Gupta Media provided visitors with a four track sampling of the movie's score while also supplying the Warner Brothers with a comprehensive analysis of their audience's post-click use of the site.

300 Media Player

With the media player in place, Gupta Media launched extensive search engine marketing campaigns, using Google Adwords and Yahoo! Sponsored Search, to drive interested users to the player. Keywords were picked to extend to a breadth of users who would be interested in the movie and the tracks that accompanied its epic story. By expanding the veins of interest that we used (such as Spartan history, Greek mythology and heroic battles), Gupta Media was able to extend the campaign's reach into a large audience of individuals who were prompted by the upcoming release of the movie to search for information about its history. Further, by utilizing the contextual networks, Gupta Media was able to target individuals who might not have known about the movie but were interested in those veins of interest.

The ad copy used in this campaign enticed and informed users about the soundtrack and was continuously monitored and modified by the Gupta Media Analysts to keep wording fresh and optimized for each audience. For instance, when the soundtrack was released, the ad copy and the landing page were modified to ensure that users knew that the soundtrack was now available. When the movie was released, the ad copy was again updated to reflect interest from individuals who had experienced the heart-pounding soundtrack while watching the movie.

Results

Over the course of the SEM campaign, Gupta Media successfully drove over 48,500 users to the 300 Soundtrack media player. At an average cost-per-click of $0.132 the client was able to maximize the value of their online media buy. By utilizing a post-click tracking system, the client obtained a comprehensive understanding of post-click usage. Users were both highly engaged and qualified as evidenced by their interactions with the player. On average, users played each song over 3 times and responded with high purchase intent as illustrated by the following media player click results:

The 300 Soundtrack had incredible success at retail. First week sales were 10,674, making it #74 on overall chart (soundtrack released on 3/6, film came out 3/9). Second week sales were 14,403, making it #52 on overall chart, driven in large part by its box office success. On the soundtrack charts, 300 was #4 during its release week and moved up to #3 in the week following the movie release. As Gupta Media's involvement in the campaign wound down, the total sales had surpassed 47,000 units.

Our clients at Warner Brothers Records were obviously excited about the results of both the campaign and the soundtrack release. Tom Roberts, Marketing at Warner Brother Records had the following to say: "The Google ad buy was definitely a helpful tool in getting people to go buy the soundtrack. The campaign had a great CTR that helped drive people to our website to preorder the album. We offered a preorder on the soundtrack website, the first 500 people to order the special edition got a signed booklet from Zack Snyder (director) and Tyler Bates (composer) - we sold out of the 500 in a week and a half, and sales for the soundtrack on our website have been solid even after that ended."