Happy Death Day

As a marketing intern for Universal Pictures it was my responsibility to fill advance film screenings with UIUC students. The challenge was to get students excited about Universal’s advance screenings enough to bypass Champaign’s alternative night life in favor of it.

My research focused on finding one core insight to leverage in a promotional campaign to reach the ideal attendee. I created surveys and conducted interviews to break down my market segment and to better understand what makes movie-goers so passionate about film. As it turns out, it’s the community surrounding the film and the cultural currency and connections created between attendees that makes people so passionate. That community is hard to see day-to-day, though. Thus, I created a brand activation that fostered engagement among students and brought the movie to life on campus. I recreated masks of the villain from the movie, and had students wear them to pass out the tickets at hot spots around campus. The shared experience among students, of being personally invited to see the movie from the masked villain himself, was a huge success. People posted about the movie all over social media, and students started seeking us out all over campus to get tickets and pictures with the masks villains. See what happens when Happy Death Day's masked killer is brought to life on the UIUC campus.Happy Death Day!