 This week’s egtabite features a sophisticated multi-media campaign across television, radio, online and cinema. Rai Pubblicità, the cross-media sales house of Rai – the Italian public broadcaster, placed compelling content at the heart of a series of movie promotions for its client, 20th Century Fox, making full use of the unique strengths of Rai’s channels and advertising platforms.
Rai Pubblicità focused on entertaining the audience by presenting great content, designing the campaign in line with the client’s objectives. The following example – for the cinema launch of Ridley Scott's hit movie Exodus: Gods and Kings – explains how Rai’s channels delivered the campaign across multiple touchpoints.
This is one of the case studies featured on egta’s website for World Radio Day.
Two key ingredients for success
 The campaign for the cinema launch of the film Exodus drew on two concepts: the big event and sound branding. As appropriate for a movie on an epic scale, Rai Pubblicità devoted a large amount of airtime to promoting the movie launch during the period from 15 December 2014 to 17 January 2015. In addition to classical advertising in the form of TV spots and customised on-screen frames, Rai Uno screened Ten Commandments, a one-man show by Academy Award winning director Roberto Benigni. Thematically linked to the subject matter of Exodus, the show was the most successful television event of 2014, with an audience of more than 10.3 million and a 38.3% market share.
The TV campaign supported the sound brand concept through the use of 5” mini spots delivered throughout the day, with a strong presence in prime time. This element of the campaign helped convert the movie’s soundtrack into a mood for viewers, linking the broadcaster's television stations with the movie's distinctive sound.
For the big event concept, Rai Radio1 and Radio2 brought the Ridley Scott movie into its editorial content, with a series of pieces thematically linked to the Biblical epic. These included pieces on major Biblical movies, film soundtracks, the history and places of the Jewish Exodus and Ridley Scott’s characters. 15” promotional spots amplified the editorial content, ensuring widespread coverage on Rai’s radio stations, and podcast pre-rolls introduced the movie to digital audio listeners.
The Exodus soundtrack became Radio1's new sound brand, with 150 iterations each week, creating a perfect fusion of the movie and radio brands.
The online element of the campaign centred around a special 20th Century Fox section on the RAI.TV platform, using the Rai Celebrity format, which was promoted on the site’s taskbar and was used to host the client’s videos. Additionally, all advertising formats in this section were reserved for 20th Century Fox.
Cinema advertising comprised the final piece of the cross-media jigsaw, firstly with 5” teasers in the early phase of the campaign, followed by 4’30” preview trailers closer to the launch date.
Why this matters for egta members
The case of Exodus: God and Kings shows how storytelling and sound branding can be used to develop a coherent and powerful advertising campaign across a number of media touchpoints. As listeners and viewers ultimately look for content on their favourite radio and television channels, developing and leveraging content offers brands that have a story to tell an exceptionally effective way to engage consumers. |
