Paramount Pictures, along with their advertising agency, MEC Global, were looking for a unique and conversational way to promote the summer 2009 movie release of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to entertainment fans. They wanted to make the movie release a massive event.

The Goal:
Increase brand metrics (unaided awareness and purchase intent) for the release of the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”

The Solution:
To drive last-minute knowledge of the movie’s opening date and a sense of urgency, ChaCha developed a creative and interactive SMS campaign that counted down to the opening of the movie. Every day, from June 19 until June 24, a new set of creative was served, counting down the days until the movie release. ChaCha served nearly 1 million conversational text ads targeted to the entertainment category during the 6-day campaign.

“The ultimate goal of our campaign was to make the release of Transformers a massive event. Using ChaCha allowed us to communicate directly to entertainment fans in a timely manner. We felt a daily countdown to the Wednesday premiere of the movie using text messaging was a great way to drive unaided awareness of the big event.”

- Michael Rosenberg, Director, National Advertising, Paramount Pictures 

The Results:
In order to measure brand awareness of “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”, ChaCha enlisted the assistance of InsightExpress, a digital marketing research agency that measures advertising effectiveness, to complete a study of ChaCha users before and after the ad campaign. Unaided brand awareness for “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” in the week leading up to the movie’s release increased by an unprecedented 27 percentage points. Purchase intent increased by 10 percentage points.

The campaign also outperformed mobile norms in unaided awareness and mobile ad awareness, and matched or outperformed the norm in purchase intent. Several demographic segments drove the increases:

• Teens (the majority of the sample) showed increases in unaided awareness, mobile ad awareness and purchase intent
• Slightly older respondents (19-24) responded best, with increases across all metrics
• Males 18-34 showed a huge 58-point increase in mobile ad awareness
• Respondents who went to four or more movies in the last two months were most positively impacted by the ad campaign

The survey also noted that ChaCha’s audience was extraordinarily engaged and eager to take the survey, allowing for large sample sizes. InsightExpress hadn’t seen that level of engagement in a long time, demonstrating how powerful it can be when the right message is sent, at the right time, to the right audience. 

About ChaCha (www.chacha.com) a free mobile answers service, allows users to call 1-800-2-ChaCha™ or text questions to ChaCha (242242™) on mobile phones and receive answers within minutes. Its unique advertising solutions provide pay-for-engagement opportunities for advertisers like Palm, IKEA, Coca-Cola, McDonald’s and the Obama Campaign to precisely target and embed their messages within millions of text conversations. Unlike traditional media, ChaCha’s advertising platform is simple, results-driven and measurable. ChaCha’s mobile service now delivers over 30 million impressions each month to nearly 2 million users.

Created by serial entrepreneur Scott A. Jones in January 2008,ChaCha is funded by Bezos Expeditions, the personal investment firm of Jeff Bezos; Morton Meyerson, former President and Vice Chairman of EDS as well as Chairman and CEO of Perot Systems; Rod Canion, founding CEO of Compaq Computer; the Simon family; and Jack Gill, Silicon Valley venture capitalist.

About InsightExpress (www.insightexpress.com) is a leading digital marketing research firm. Through its patented technologies, proprietary solutions, world-class expertise and time-tested research principles, InsightExpress transforms the way advertisers, agencies, publishers and researchers optimize their marketing activities. The company is headquartered in Stamford, CT, with offices in San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles.