Channel 4

Assassins Creed Live Stunt

The film’s Director, Justin Kurzel opted for real life stunts in place of CGI wherever possible and we knew any promotional activity should be in celebration of this. To help celebrate the launch of the film, 4 Sales worked closely with 20th Century Fox to create an amazing advertising innovation, 100% real, 100% live.

The Big Idea

Our collective killer insight - that once people discovered that the stunts in the movie were performed for real by real stunt men, their desire to see the movie increased greatly – was the simple truth we placed at the heart of our idea. Leveraging and building upon a rich C4 history of ground-breaking live TV advertising, together with the client and their agency at a special Channel 4 PL4Y session, we came up with the idea & the terrifying ambition of creating ‘The World’s Most Dangerous Ad Break’.

Working alongside our creative partners The Outfit, and with film’s actual stunt man, Dave Grant, we reproduced one of the most iconic and daring stunts from the movie – the ‘Leap of Faith’ – a
death-defying 100ft freefall, which we aired live on national television, on C4 in our biggest Sunday night drama, Humans. The challenges of live TV coupled with winter weather AND a genuinely life-risking stunt, made this an ad break to remember.

Most movie adaptations of massive game franchises are overly-reliant on CGI effects, but for Assassins Creed, things were different.

Making it Happen

Whilst the idea itself seemed simple, the reality was that this was, literally, one of the UK’s most dangerous & ambitious adverts of all time – and as it was live on TV so the team had no margin for error. In the days prior, to create true anticipation for the event, we devised a series of enigmatic 10” teasers with just the words: “NO HARNESS. NO CGI. NO GOING BACK” and an end card revealing the tune in information. The teasers were optimised for a broad audience, playing out across C4 and E4 for 5 days prior to the jump. As part of the pre-promotion we managed to get the film’s biggest star to record a personal message to the C4 viewers which we used across C4’s social channels; because what’s better than Michael Fassbender telling the public to watch our stunt.

On the night, a live teaser in the ad break before our stunt showed the stuntman 100ft up against the London skyline. In the first ad break of the season finale of our award winning drama Humans, he leapt 100ft, in full Assassins Creed costume, with absolutely no safety harnesses, live on C4. To add further excitement and drive reach we also live streamed the ad on C4 Facebook Live, Fox’s Facebook Live and the movie’s Facebook page, with C4 further promoting the video across social media for the rest of that evening. And as if that wasn’t enough, the spot was also streamed simultaneously live on the All4 homepage (for the first time ever). The global teams at Fox were so excited by the project that they rolled the stunt out across their biggest international media partners, including LadBible and Facebook in other territories, meaning our live jump was viewed globally - all in all a huge deal for Channel 4 and Fox.

The stunt is estimated to have generated up to £1.2m ticket sales at the box office
Of viewers that saw the stunt, 75% claimed they were more likely to watch the move as a result

The Results

The results were outstanding, delivering against all Fox’s desired metrics & the client was thrilled. “Very happy here. Huge thank you for all your help and support on this project. Looked absolutely brilliant” Sarah Francis, Head of Promotions.

The live aspect of the stunt added stature, and viewers held the movie in higher esteem than previously - 75% claimed they were more likely to watch the movie as a result.

  • The stunt is estimated to have generated up to £1.2m in ticket sales at the box office
  • Assassins Creed opened at #2, rising to #1 and was the most successful game-to-movie adaptation ever released in the UK
  • The UK out-performed the US and the main point-of-difference was our peak-time, highly-targeted live stunt which accounted for c.25% of total media spend (including social amplification)
  • Humans provided the perfect audience for the stunt being the top featured show watched at 9pm on the 18th Dec
  • After the stunt, the film rose from 12th to 3rd in a list of movies respondents most wanted to see
  • Social reach on the night across Facebook & Twitter delivered an additional 16m impressions
  • It trended #1 on Twitter during 9-10pm
  • PR coverage of stunt in consumer press was valued at c.£150k