How do you engage a modern audience with a historical figure that most people don’t know? More importantly, how do you do it in a way that isn’t boring?
From code breakers to record breakers
The Big Idea
“Let’s design a code for viewers to break!” - a simple idea that would enable us to take a central theme from the film and use it as a way of engaging viewers to enter a competition. But how could we make our competition stand out from all of the other regular movie competitions that abound on adverts? We turned to look at the situation from a different perspective (like Turing). Instead of asking viewers an easy multiple-choice question, we produced something really challenging to ensure only the smartest would be successful, just like Turing did when he released an almost impossible national crossword to secretly recruit for his team of code breakers. To capture the imagination of the Channel 4, More 4 and Film 4 viewers we thought we’d try to replicate this in our own way.
Making it Happen
Using production company Sassy Films, we were able to facilitate time for them to actually film the lead characters (Benedict Cumberbatch & Keira Knightley) to introduce and host the competition. Having the actual cast appear in the advert lent enormous credibility to the campaign and gave it some real star quality to make viewers sit up and notice. Sassy Films went to work on creating our unique code and result was something very special and exciting, and really hard! So hard in fact that Channel 4 had to make the client aware that realistically they should be expecting around 500 entries for the prize of an ultimate gadget bundle.
The Results
It seems Channel 4 viewers are real code enthusiasts and love a challenge! The campaign achieved our highest ever volume of entries with more than 8,000 participants which is double the average entry rate, plus almost everyone got the right answer. The film then went on to achieve phenomenal success with its opening weekend smashing targets by grossing more than £2.7m and becoming Studio Canal’s biggest opening success for 3 years. Later, the movie became the top grossing independent film release of the year and won a host of top industry awards including an Oscar.
But the real question is; can you crack the code?
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